The Besties - Ratchet Versus the E Triple

Episode Date: June 18, 2021

In a grand confluence, we've got a major event in the gaming year, E3, matched with a legit game release, Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart on PS5 (codes provided by Sony). Somehow we'll talk about the highs and lows of both of these major events in one absolutely stuffed episode. Get in here, people! 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!

Guys, I need your help. I'm so I don't know if I've talked about this publicly. I'm moving to sunny coastal California. Yeah. But yeah, I know. I know. But I don't have a lot of time. In fact, I have no time and I need to pack my entire house.

Right. And I have like a week, but I want to spend that week mostly eating good food. Right. So I think that gives me, but I want to spend that week mostly eating good food. So I think that gives me about like five hours to pack. You know everything's vegan in California, right? Oh, that's why. I mean, they do have a Panda Express, so you can hit that up. They have one Panda Express down in Santa Cruz. But the line is always so crazy because everybody goes there to get the only meat in the whole state.

But guys, how do I pack my house? Don't pack your house. You don't need any of that. Can I tell you, look around you and you might see, I'm just judging by what I see from the camera, but where you see hundreds of stuffed animals, I see, of every different shape and stripe,

I see weight that is keeping you down that is yeah man like look at those stacks of adult butt medicine that you use for yourself and like you don't need all that adult butt medicine chris chris i see a lot of leather bound and it seems like you've bound them and it says playboy with all the articles cut out and you can like arrange them by year. That's just holding you down, man. Yeah, man. You probably couldn't tell, but if you look really close at my butt medicine, there's actually two flavors. There's the American Preparation H and there's the one I brought back from my honeymoon in Italy, Preparazione Aci. Yeah.

You are a collector of nothing else. I want to say also, I would leave behind the large box that has flies swarming around it that just says vagrants written on it. That's horrifying. That's weird, man. That might be evidence that you should leave behind just for your own legal protection. And let me just count. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Yeah, you don't need eight PewDiePie fat heads

hanging on your wall. Like, I think just one PewDiePie fat head would probably be enough. Just do the one that you love the most that speaks to you. Those Brothers Funko Pops are adorable. There's so many of them. You don't need them My name is Justin McElroy

And I know the best game of the week My name is Griffin McElroy And I do know the best game of the week What's up? My name is Justin McElroy, and I know the best game of the week. My name is Griffin McElroy, and I do know the best game of the week. What's up? My name is Chris Plant, and I know the best game of the week. My name is Ross Froschek, and I know the best three of the week. It was E3. Hey, everybody. Welcome to the show, The Besties. It's a video game club. And just by listening, you are a member. We're trying something new and different this week uh shaking up the format by talking about it a good new game uh and i think we're all uh if you

can sense a little bit of giddiness i think it's the excitement of talking about a new good game and this one this is gonna actually freak your bean a little bit you know the new consoles that came out last year it It's made for those! They're finally making games for them now, which is fun. It's pretty cool. It's Ratchet & Clank Rift Apart. It's a platformer shooter, and it's the latest in a

long series of Ratchet & Clank games, but the first new one in quite a while. I think the last one we got was a reboot based off the movie at the same time? Anyway, it's colorful. I think it was a reboot based off the movie at the same time anyway i think it was a reboot of the first it was yeah but anyway it came out in like 2014 or something wild like that yeah so it's been a while and uh it's a great new game and uh i would love to hear your all's uh thoughts opinions uh hopes yeah justin you mentioned that we haven't had a ton

of dedicated for the new consoles releases um the only three that we've had for playstation 5 are um demon souls returnal actually there's been four demon souls returnal um this game and uh astro's playroom is the right yeah if you count that hell yeah i do yeah there's no reason not to and this week week was E3, as some people might know. We'll talk about E3 a little bit in the second half of the show. But in watching all the trailers from E3, it is instantly obvious to me which games are targeting the new hardware and which games are targeting the, let's put it on everything,

and then we'll make the new, you know, the new versions will optimize them for the new hardware. The difference is night and day, and really there is no better representation of that than Ratchet & Clank Rift Apart, a game that literally would not be able to run on a PlayStation 4 Pro or anything like it because of a number of things. I want to get to Ratchet & Clank, But to go to the E3 comment you just said. What you mean is. None of the games are targeting the new consoles. Is that what you meant to say? Because I don't think that there were.

Any standout games. There were a couple. What do you. This is going to be an interesting show. Because we have a big press conference. And we have a big game at the same time. But is there anything that you see where it's like, wow, now that's next generation? I mean, to keep it anchored in the game that we're discussing right now, I didn't necessarily see anything that looked as good as Ratchet and Clank.

Yeah, I think that's sort of my point. It's tough to judge that just because those games aren't real or done yet i i feel like i have to issue a pretty huge like mea culpa here in that i am like very quick to dismiss sort of technical uh the the technical sort of stats of games as being something i give a shit about uh like i want games to have a smooth frame rate whether it's 30 or 60 like i i don't really care but when when you know people start getting really mark cerny on it like i just go to static and don't don't really care uh and so i want the load times those fast load times on the playstation 5 but everything else i was like who gives a shit and this is the game and this is a truly staggering accomplishment i feel like that proves

that there needed to be a new generation of consoles it is it looks good in a way that i've never really seen a game look good before and it's tough to kind of put that into words like there's very uh reductionist i've seen a lot of people say like, it's like a Pixar movie that you can play, but breaking that barrier between this is a very, very polished cut scene and this is the game that you're playing. This game shatters that barrier in a way that is, it takes your breath away.

It is an incredibly good looking game. Yeah, to run with the movie comparison, I think what comes to mind for me is more like um so in in this game i should set this as a base first you are in um i guess like a multiple universe rip up thing where you are able to jump between spaces effectively instantaneously and that is possible because of the technology the ps5 that there doesn't have to be these like load times that you can load up and span massive amounts of space virtually in an instant which allows for effectively cuts the way you would have them in a movie right

and like that's what i imagine with this is like if you think way way way back when when people like watching a movie uh and it's just you static image imitating theater, and then a cut happened, and then more cuts kept happening, and people were like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Like, what is happening here? Right. This is a bit disorienting. And then everybody got used to it. I feel the same thing is happening here on an obviously smaller degree. here on a obviously smaller degree but like how many of y'all got nauseous playing this game at first because i was getting queasy from how rapidly it was shooting me from place to place

yeah and also it the game opens on a big uh futuristic parade and so it is just like full and it also has a sort of uncharted level, like opening catastrophe sort of thing happening. That is just a complete overstimulation, like complete visual overload. I don't think we should get bogged down in talking about like how the game looks because it's not something that's very interesting to listen to people talk to. I just want to say that like this is not my genre of game that I really like. I don't give a crap about this franchise, really. This is the first game that I really made a dent into in the Ratchet & Clank series. And I don't know if I'm going to stick with it to the end.

But all that said, I think it's worth playing to see it. I think it's worth playing because of how incredible it looks. It does look incredible. But for me, I get inured to graphic, like a lot of people, I think. This thing is consistently great looking. I don't love the aesthetics. It's not my thing, but the speed at which it shifts and some of the set pieces, it made me kind of bummed that Uncharted isn't currently headed towards PS5.

I mean, probably at some point. But currently not because the way that like these set pieces just like move through the environment like the speed at which you're doing like this huge piece over here and then you're moving on there's one where you're like grinding while escaping a giant robot and like you're jumping between tracks and the whole thing looks amazing but like honestly for me i am and i have a similar background with ratchet and clank i have no reference for these games i platforming is not really my thing to begin with um but like which i guess these are more like action platform but still um the variety of

weapons and the weapons in this game are all uniformly really fun to use and like make these big set piece fights where you've got like 30 enemies on screen and you've got uh all these really cool guns to dispatch them there's like um one that's called ricochet right where you shoot a shot out and it hovers midair and as you repeatedly pull the trigger it ping pongs from that static position into the enemy uh while making like pinball type noises and you like the better you time the bouncing of the bullet off the enemy the more damage you do and that's just like one of like dozens of uh maybe not dozens there's probably i guess there's probably about 20 or so weapons in the game um that are all just like really fun. There's like a,

the topiary sprinkler. Did you guys get that? Yeah. It's you did it. Oh, it's a turret that you throw down on the ground that looks like a sprinkler and it's shooting water out all around you. Except it transforms whatever enemies it hits into static topiaries,

covers them in greenery, freezes them in place and lets you like really wail on them. And then all these guns level up as you use them. And when they hit level five, they actually change into a different form. So the topiary sprinkler becomes the toxiary sprinkler. And it's like, adds a poisoning artifact,

or there's a, another turret type guy named Mr. Fungus, which is great because he... Or Mr. Fun Guy. There it is. You throw him on the ground and he makes quips while he's shooting. And then when you level him up to level five,

he gets Miss Fun Guy. And they both appear when you lay it down. And there's so much variety and experimentation that makes going back and forth between the weapons really fun. Yeah. I think you're about to say something wrong, and I between the weapons really fun. Yeah. I, I, the thing you're about to say something wrong and I really,

no, it's going to be right. Don't worry. The thing that I keep going back to is like, I've, I've played a lot of Ratchet and Clank games. A lot of this is, is pretty par for the course. Like they've always had really creative weapons.

The characters have always been very consistent. The thing that continues to blow me away in this game. And, and again, I know Griffin talked talked about the load times but there are there are moments in this game like that you i've never seen in another video game before just because the technical limitations the idea that you can be in a boss fight and you'll be fighting the boss and then at one point the boss reaches some like health threshold whatever and he'll yank you you'll start let's say in like an ice arena and he'll yank you and suddenly you're on top of a volcano and there's no load time and there's no transition time and it's just like i've never seen like a full level full texture full everything change in an instant like that and you cannot do that

on any other piece of hardware except for maybe a Series X. Maybe. We've yet to see what a game on Series X looks like, but it even got like, I was even running into moments where it was disorienting, not in an emotion sickness way, but in a stupid brain room full of theater

watching the train come at the movie screen and like i get out of the way there are these rifts that you hit with this i don't know it's like a grappling crystal thing something whatever but there's rifts at a distance that you can shoot and pull the rift towards you if you can imagine this and then you go through the rift and suddenly you have teleported to where the rift was and it's like what's on the this is an important distinction yes what was on the other side of the rift teleports to where you are right and that that if that sounds uh you're not working there you're warping that place to where you are it's absolutely like the first time i did it i needed a second i was like okay

that was i need to get my bearings again yeah i was trying to figure out how they did that my best guess is that it turns the entire world outside of the rift infectively into a matte painting and then pulls like that matte painting to you and then you enter the spot and you've teleported it's it's and they layer that they layer that with a uh i i don't remember the i played again just a little bit of ratchet and clank but i don't remember the platforming being as like uh like prime prince of persia level demanding as like you're doing a uh you do a a double jump into an air dash into a wall run into another air dash to another wall run and then you jump and swing and then you grab one of these rifts

and pull yourself towards it and have to do all these things in it. The comment in this game is great, as Juice said, because of all the different sort of ways you have to dispatch enemies, and the progression of those is great. There's a lot of collectibles and a lot of ways to upgrade and make it your own,

but the platforming is also really fucking good, and they have lots of little bonus uh secret things like uh sub levels that you can go and explore to get like costume pieces and more upgrade materials and stuff it's it's uh the platforming is really really good yeah griffin mentioned the collectibles bit it's actually one of the very few games that like does collectibles extremely well because every single there's like gold bolts that are hidden throughout the world and every single one of those unlocks like a fun visual customization for the game where like the currency the normal currency is like a bunch of screws and nuts and bolts and stuff and you can change all those to like soda cans or like coins or like gems

and like every little aspect of your character can kind of be tweaked in interesting ways that encourages you to seek this stuff out beyond just like, oh, I want to get a trophy for it. It's like really smart. The only thing that I find kind of like a bummer about this game doesn't even have to do with the game. I mean, the game being so great is kind of the thing. Platformers are a great way to test

the early boundaries of a console, right? Like we saw that with so many consoles in the PS2, Crash Bandicoot, Super Mario. So I'm really excited that this shows that it works. I go back to what we said about E3 and did we really see anything that is like truly targeting the next generation? I wonder if we will see something like this again

in earnest for another two or three years. Yeah, I don't know. at the soonest because i feel like now that sony realizes how hard it is to actually get these consoles out there it feels like they're kind of backing up on this oh yeah everything's for the next gen um we know for a fact that horizon sequel is going to be on ps4 it sounds like the God of War sequel will probably be on PS4. Gran Turismo will probably be too. I think they realized between one, just having a massive install

base, and two, the PS5 just isn't out there. I was trying to think of why is Sony not at E3 this year, and I think the answer is why would you go show new games for a console people can't buy? That's just like a bad vibe um so i i hope that we get more stuff like this at the same time i i just wonder if

if this was like one of those like it seemed like a good idea at the time and now we're gonna backpedal a little bit well yeah i mean this this is what they wanted uh fucking knack to be except it's good. Like, Knack is going to be like, hey, check out all these particles. Check out all these little moving pieces that you can see all at the same time. This game was built to show off what the PS4 is capable of.

And you're like, cool, it's not fun. But this one does all that shit and is also a really good platformer. I'm kind of building off what Plant said, but I've been thinking a lot about watching E3 and the games that are being announced there and looking at the fact that PlayStation 5 demand may not catch up next year, may still be lagging behind well into 2022. a sea change at this point where it will be weird to expect games like this at this point in the cycle of a of a console because i think if you look at what has happened with the playstation 5 and the xbox like the demand this has been proven now to the manufacturers like this demand

is not dependent on new games like and and so it economically won't make sense to have big new games when a new platform comes out people will like i think this is going to be the norm where you see these games that are like i mean the next god of war is straddling playstation 4 and playstation 5 this is the way it's going to be from now on like it is not going to be like that hard cut and then everybody onto the next thing. And there will be, I think you think big picture about stuff like this too. I'd love to know if,

see if you, you line up with that, but I think that's where we're headed. Yeah. The weird thing is, I think that's a hundred percent true for this generation, but the weird thing is in seven years or whatever for the next generation, by then cloud streaming will actually finally at long last

be working and it might not even matter i i think about um you're assuming an investment in american infrastructure um that i don't know that we will see i don't know that they would wait for an investment in american infrastructure to like make this make the switch exactly i'm just saying the capabilities of actually do it like like the capabilities of reliably doing it and the cost of doing it and everything. Yeah, I mean, we'll see on that. And with infrastructure. Yeah, but...

Oh, just one really quick thought on that, though. What's bonkers to me about this moment is I said, you know, what thing is truly targeting modern consoles? And the only thing that actually does come to mind, they seem to, to like barely be able to get to run on a damn console which is a microsoft flight simulator so on one side we have like everything's being targeted for the previous generation and the other side we have a game that like is now taking a year to maybe get to run they still can't put a release date on it um right i'm not even sure if it'll run on xbox s i'm that's like unclear to me it's weird um so it's just weird that we these consoles

are in a weird spot between the old consoles being way less powerful in the top end gpus being like absurdly powerful and that only gets weirder with like you know there's a global pandemic that's fucking up supply lines and a global uh semiconductor chip shortage that's affecting like minorly every and bit well yeah it's all it's all one big thing and and you know if it weren't for that stuff there'd be more playstation fives and the install base would be bigger and maybe we'd be having a different conversation regardless the conversation we're having having right now has very little to do with ratchet and clank rift apart out now on playstation 5 insomniac you done done it again uh what a good game uh and also can i say uh i the sort of humor in these games and like writing

in these games like really does it for me but i i i i genuinely enjoyed is very refreshing to have one where it's not like trying so hard. There's a new protagonist, a female Lombax named Rivet, who is fantastic. And also I think the game does a really smart thing where all of your progression and skills and weapons and upgrades and everything are consistent between the two characters.

You don't have to, like whenever you switch characters, you don't have to do that annoying thing of like, oh, shit. Well, what did Rivet have equipped last time I played this? It's all consistent. Also super smart is that Rivet gets paired up with Clank. Clank. Right. And Ratchet gets paired up with a different kind of robot, which is so smart. I don't know if this is intentional.

So smart if you have a franchise that's been away a very long time because there's no inbuilt camaraderie that you feel like you're missing out on. I don't feel like there's all these. Even very early in the game, they're making references to stuff that maybe happened, maybe didn't, I have no way of knowing. But introducing these new relationships to get on board with makes it a lot easier to engage with because I don't feel like I'm missing

some shared character history. Yeah, it's really, I think, terrific. They did a great job. It's amazing that Insomniac has released at this point Miles Morales. They updated the last Spider-Man game to PS5 like pretty dramatically. And now this game, like-

What the fuck is everybody else doing crazy like it's it's all your asses y'all yeah man it's not even that hard they didn't even crunch on it they didn't even crunch on it come on bill bunch of crunch come on phil all the different ill-sounding guys over at microsoft come on just make a new one of something. Come on. All right. Let's, oh my God. I can't believe we haven't even delved into, that's actually like, it's very good.

Not everybody can play it. I think this game will have a long tail. I'll say that. As PlayStation 5s continue to become available, I feel like it's this and Spider-Man and- If they do a pack-in, a pack-in like box this would be the game i feel like that comes with very smart extremely smart i mean by the time you buy a playstation 5

you listener at home it will probably be included in playstation plus as part of the like ps plus collection so don't stress it sells the console it sells the hardware better than maybe the best any game has ever sold any hardware it's like oh this is why you this is why you need this demon souls is also really fucking yeah sure it's great it's remake um all right let's take uh let's take a second to ourselves to get collected and then we'll talk about the triple e3 a real show happening we're there obviously i still am not used to e3 happening and me not being there, but it is a lot easier when no one else is there.

The FOMO this year has been just great. It's been reduced. Oh, really? Wait, you've been experiencing FOMO? No, the lack of it. I don't feel any sort of like, oh, man, I wish I was where? I mean, I don't. It's the LOMO.

The LOMO, the lack of missing out let's say there's so much to unpack and i feel like because of the nature of it being always always online and always online experience more or less this year it was just the press conferences yes does anybody want to start by saying let's get let's let's just go around the horn who had the best best one this year where real quick before we focus on individual games because i want to do that was anybody else like really pleasantly surprised at the amount of stuff that was like i had zero expectations for this e3 uh because it didn't exist and i and it has seemed so sort of scattershot and thrown together like i'm i i was really pleasantly surprised at the amount of stuff that was that was revealed yeah i i was too i was actually was not expecting that much i mean really

when you boil it down it's it was really just like microsoft's press conference and nintendo uh well no i mean there were there were lots of other ones that i mean there were i mean that's true actually devolver had a really good press conference. Ubisoft, Capcom. Yeah, no, you're right, actually, when I think about it. There was a lot. And I wasn't expecting that, but I also think they did a good job of helping the release calendar with the smaller titles to make it feel like, hey, there were actually games coming out, even if the teams of 300 people are not putting out their games. Nintendo especially. I think Nintendo had had a really really strong showing they revealed some some great looking new games new new 2d metroid hell yeah like uh uh new wario ware advanced wars reboot like all that was was really great and exciting another look at um the next breath of the wild game that's all great the biggest thing for me is like almost all the games in Nintendo's press conference are coming out this fall, which was sick because, frankly, Nintendo needed that worse than anybody else, I think, because looking forward at the release schedule for Nintendo, it was all kind of an empty slate.

Yeah, but I think Nintendo's thing also hinted very strongly at a thing that is rumored, but weirdly didn't announce which is new better nintendo switch hardware is coming because like you do not um release a whole bunch of hardcore fan favorites unless you need to like move new hardware that that's well they don't need to move new hardware uh well that's that like you time those things together because new hardware is going to be bought by like the most hardcore fans right and that's the perfect time to release the advanced wars remake and the like 2d metroid it is not the you know casual nintendo switch person who is picking it up from mario golf who is buying those games they also did a neat thing yeah they also did a thing that i've never really seen nintendo do at e3 before which was the sort of capstone game for square enix's press conferences they announced a new marvel's uh guardian of the galaxy game uh that is going to be like a you know action rpg uh big game and

nintendo uh like circled back to that like close to the beginning of their press conference as a cloud streaming game which is something nintendo has messed around with now a couple times they have control cloud version they have hitman 3 cloud version and those games work like pretty well and so it was wild seeing nintendo say like we also have this huge third-party game coming to coming to our shit which was not a move that nintendo has been able to pull on you know we you or or we or really anything else just because of the huge difference between their hardware and sony and microsoft did you notice the disclaimer on that video no at the very beginning it's like in very small print it's

like this is only like an example of what would be happening if this was being played at absolute perfect conditions with like a charge connection like yadaada, yada, yada. It's like, do not expect the game to look like this. If you live at Verizon, this will look great. Yes, exactly. But I think the strongest show this year was Microsoft, which is wild because I don't even have any of the new Microsoft shit. But them having Bethesda like in the roster

was I feel like has patched up any holes in the ship that they may have had and pretty much everything they showed off i was like okay yep that looks that also looks good slime rancher 2 sure why the fuck not yeah okay why not yeah they continue to be so far ahead of the field in terms of the game pass like just being a valuable entity that i just don't know how you catch up at this point i don't even know if sony is trying Nintendo is even considering trying because Microsoft is so locked into this idea of like the amount of money they must be making is insane. But it's good because like people don't want to have to stress.

Is this going to be worth my $60? You could play it for two hours as part of your fee for the month and don't feel bad if it's like shitty it kind of heralds back to like blockbuster when you picked out the wrong game and then you were just bummed all weekend like right no you could play the other 600 games are on game pass it's fine juice your boy todd got out there showed everybody a little snippet of starfield i was just wondering how that hit for you yeah i'm thrilled like that looks fantastic excellent i mean it's not a game it's not a picture of some astronauts even when it comes out it's not gonna work no it's not make them like they work todd'll fix it up todd's like todd todd literally had the gall the absolute

god i love todd howard's i don't know personally I love his work. I love that Todd Howard had the gall to come out and be like, Skyrim, 10 years later, still, we got it, pretty much. Took me a decade, and I pretty much nailed it. Sold it to a bunch of people a lot of times, and it basically works. Anyway, Starfield is really coming really soon, we promise. That was very, I was excited by a lot. Did you pick one thing? What was the one thing, Griffin, that you're most excited about?

Before we move on to the J-Man. Honestly, and it was all cut scene, but the announcement for the new Arcane Austin game, Redfall, the co-op vampire slaying game, like, you know, we have no idea what that game's gonna be, but the idea of a co-op sort of looks like class-based, maybe left for, like, it's tough that we don't even know what the structure of that game is going to be,

but the sort of, like, almost grindhouse-y sort of 70s horror vibe of that reveal trailer had me, like, shuddering with excitement. I thought that shit looked really, really good yeah um a lot of fun color at this year's e3 i feel like the tone has changed even from the last time xbox had a big showcase where it's like a lot a little bit more upbeat i feel like for a lot of these games than than the grim dark sort of stuff that uh was at their last press conference. I have, I have two that I wanted to talk about real quick.

My first is an honorable mention. And then it's my winner for my E3 awards, my Justin McElroy Memorial E3 awards. Number one, and this is just kind of a surprise, but when they showed multiplayer for Halo Infinite, I had definitely a moment where I was like, Oh fuck.

I really want to play Halo Infinite. I forget. Halo multiplayer is extremely fun and I'd like to play it. at all these guys with swords and stuff this is great i'd love to play this for a week before everybody gets too good and i can't play anymore but still i was surprised i was surprised at the little hit that i got because i had been you know you've been seeing so many like single player teases for halo that's like you're kind of thinking about that and every time there's like a different ai character who's like what's up with cortana i'm like i have no idea but uh the multiplayer looked looked fun but the thing the number one thing and this was at the um uh the future games showcase i believe they called it um so it wasn't a big deal to almost anybody but me but san barlo is back with a new game called immortality it's about

the disappearance of an actress that filmed three movies and then disappeared. FMV coming next year. The writing team on this one, they got Alan Scott from Queen's Gambit, Amelia Gray from Mr. Robot, David Lynch collaborator Barry Gifford, who worked on Wild at Heart and Lost Highway, featuring an FMV game directed by Sam Barlow.

I don't mind if I do, actually. I don't mind if I do enjoy this game very much. And I don't actually need the new consoles because this is probably coming to, like, everything. This is coming to phones and stamps. Anyway, this is the most exciting. But a lot of stuff looked good. That looked really good.

Very disappointed to not see a new Fable because you shouldn't be surprised. Hey, they said it out loud. They said it out loud. They said the word Fable out loud, loud they said it out loud they said the word fable out loud and that ain't nothing said the word fable out loud chris what was what was your oh by the way worse well hold on let's get to let's get let's get to worse later let's let's let's let's hit the high five fine point oh i was gonna say we're not gonna see that fable because uh playground games was too busy making an actually good game uh forza horizon 5 the latest entry in the best franchise of this current generation by far um and now it is just gone full chaos the the way these games have

always worked is a big open worlds beautiful like kind of uh x games knockoff vibe not the best part of it but then with the dlc they'd be like hey you're in legoville and like hot wheels uh town and it always got very goofy with this they're just like whatever it's games of service we're dropping it all on you at once so you can like race through like bowling pin arenas and all these like zany gta online sort of tracks while also having the like hyper realistic um locations uh that are kind of familiar with the regular game these racing games i i was so sad when need for speed um quietly died a tragic death after that kind of like most wanted era and these games have picked up the torch and run with it they rule so much um fresh how about you um griffin mentioned it briefly

earlier uh if there's literally no announcement that would have hit me more in my direct warm spot than the metroid new 2d metroid game uh metroid dread um i would rather see metroid dread than prime 4 at this point i think most people had i saw some reactions on twitter like yeah if you want to just keep making 2d metroid games you could just take as long as you need on prime 4 um you know i've talked about it on the show before i really really liked mercury steam's uh samus returns which came out on 3ds would love to see it on switch but this is exactly what i was talking about what this um you know they're using that 2.5d like perspective but this feels this looks exactly like the metroid games that i fell in love with metroidvania is my favorite genre and it's because of games

like this that it totally clicks for me i am so totally amped for it out in october too that was out in october that was bonkers this game has been rumored for like the last year or so people actually thought it was going to get revealed at last e3 and it's basically my understanding is it's been done for quite a while so it's pretty amazing that it's finally coming out and i agree with plant like i think we are on the verge of seeing a switch pro announcement probably in july with a launch either timed with metroid's release or a little bit before maybe in september um and um man i think day and day fucking psyched you think i would be shocked if we don't see day and date for that would make sense i will say not to i am also extremely

excited for metroid dread uh true to nintendo fashion they did a long like three hour nintendo treehouse stream after their uh after the direct and they showed off some of the metroid dread and i don't know if it was just like the way that they were playing the game or whatever but the it's called dread apparently because there's this robot that will pursue you from time to time and if he catches you he kills you instantly which i saw happen like five or six times during this treehouse dream and i was like wow that that doesn't that seems scary it doesn't seem particularly fun so so here's what i sort of gathered from that, just because I've been playing all the old Metroid games recently. I think it's definitely inspired by Fusion, which had, like, a Samus lookalike

that was chasing you throughout the entire thing. The thing that you might have missed is that there are actually seven of those robots, and I think what they're probably going to do is have, like, this big open area, and there's going to be zones, and you'll probably have a boss fight with each robot, and once you kill that robot basically the zone opens up and you can freely explore so you still have that metroid hit yeah um it's a silly thing to like bring up but i was

i was i was like watching that on my phone like oh okay okay i want to just explore and get all the collectibles but if this robot kills me the second it touches me that's gonna be a yeah i would i would be surprised i think i think mercury steam really knows how to make a good exploration centric metro game so i think i have a lot of faith in that y'all should we uh hop to the well i promised justin a chance to talk about real stinkers and um i just have one and it's unfathomable to me uh to the point where it almost comes back around is

the fact that uh Jack Sparrow is being put in a sea of thieves the timing on this thing it says and the way in which they announce it the grandeur it is like it is uh like a kid disappeared in 2012 and emerged three years later with like a coney 2015 movie

like we're still talking about this right it took me three years to make but we're gonna get get him coney 2015 it's the new thing this is rare it's owned by an extremely big corporation like it should not be this big of a deal that they got this they got jack sparrow with their pirate game it's so depressing especially because there was that very good looking uh pirates of the caribbean game that got canceled um so i'm maybe still a little bit upset about that but i will say that that announcement was enough for me to wonder what the fuck's going on and see if because they've been updating that thing and i know that game has a very hardcore dedicated player base and i kind of want to know why and so that trailer was enough let's get back oh my gosh y'all see what's up cas uh at polygon cas marshall

they'll give us a tour and let me tell you that game with a tour from the hardcore sea of thieves expert that is great it is a trip yeah it rules i want to go ahead and say most of the square enix press conference uh mostly because i i don't know i've been playing final fantasy 14 so hardcore and i just wanted wanted a fucking picture of some of my favorite characters from that game would have been great. But instead, the real just wild pitch for me was Stranger of Paradise Final Fantasy Origin,

which was the game they closed out, which is a dark, gritty, even moody, a hot topic Final Fantasy XV version of the original final fantasy game in like the blandest looking action sort of uh rpg format it that game looked so uninteresting and so dull to me and i think it might just be in contrast to like how vivid and colorful and imaginative 14 is it's just like it reminded me like oh this is the exact aesthetic that this franchise chased for a long time that i find so unappealing uh and they said i'm here to kill chaos like a billion times too which that that was actually pretty good i like that um i wanted to mention my uh low point um

i've recently found myself to be quite a fan of a lot of games that capcom makes a monster hunter people are aware i very newly fell in love with monster hunter yeah and obviously resident evil village which we've talked about a lot um so i tuned into the capcom stream expecting exciting news what i got was monster hunter stories 2 which has the word monsty in it which made me want to die and then a pretty good trailer for ace attorney i'm actually very excited about that so that looks okay yeah but what i was really waiting for was the news of the resident evil 4 remake or even footage of the Resident Evil 4 VR game um instead at after they've shown the Ace Attorney trailer they're like but before we do that what about esports and I was like oh no and then they talked about esports for like 15 minutes and then that was the end of the stream

and I was very sad yeah my my low point became a little bit of not a high point but i just like i came around to it was i was pretty bummed with babylon's fall i think that's what it's called yeah the platinum game yeah and it's like a lot of the talent behind um near which obviously i talked too much about but also astral chain which is a game that i love on nintendo switch um i know i'm probably the only one i see you grinning fresh um but this look is like very games of the servicey the thing that kind of turned me around on it is like a day later somebody compared it to dragon's dogma where they're like you know this is a game that's probably not going to show very well but might feel great it also has an art design that is i don't know like trying to look impressionistic yeah it doesn't look good on a stream it is like if you were like how can i make

sure my game looks awful when people stream it you would choose this art design but maybe it'll look great on like 4k the idea of like an uh a sort of all uh an online multiplayer platinum game with like progression and customization and shit like that like that excites me i think that that's a that's a that's a strong idea sure but then it was not a good it was not a great showing yeah i i it helps to i just have to remind myself like from e3 like this is all marketing and really it's a measure of like how good is marketing there are plenty of games that look great that end up being real stinkers and there are plenty of games that look like stinkers that end up being real great so right you just don't we don't know also we somehow all did not acknowledge the existence

of the game that inevitably will be the one of all the games at E3 that the four of us collectively enjoy the most. And we'll probably be our, our big game of next year is Elden Ring. Oh yeah. Which will inevitably be the one that we all like the best. Or judging from us, it's one of the very few things we can all agree on. We will probably like that one very much.

Or as I like to call it, Dark Souls horse edition. It looks like Dark Souls, but I guess you got you got you do have a horse this time and that's fine what part of what you just said is not no it sounds to be that was not a slam not a knock i love it i love it it's a brand new world we asked you the people uh what you uh thought of e3 or what sort of stood out to you cameron said uh overprices it may be finally getting a new warioWare beats out anything

else. One of my favorites from both mine and my 10 years old brother's childhoods. Otherwise, it's fantastic that Microsoft has built a whole show around Game Pass, thus meaning all the games are affordable. It's great. That WarioWare looks wild. The value proposition on that thing is off the charts.

You're talking about WarioWare, right? Yeah, the value proposition of WarioWare, get it together, looks like really good. So many games. Can I just say real quick, I'm never gonna, I didn't see the WarioWare thing. Is it, take the, I know it's two player now, is it like take the thing off and hand it to a friend, or is it like pass and play? No, same screen.

Simultaneous. Yeah, the gimmick is in this one, you control little characters that can fly around the screen, and each has like different ways of interacting with the games and so you use those to compete in real time it looks cool I think it could be fun both of you holding the same switch

uh I don't no no I think like separate controllers weird okay Dakota said for the immediate future Hades coming to Xbox would be very happy otherwise Outer worlds 2 oh yes outer worlds 2 very funny microsoft exclusive got me pumped i love the tone and characters the first game can't wait for obsidian to expand on the fallout but pleasant energy in the sequel

yeah i loved outer worlds to outer worlds i was very very i was excited and kind of surprised it seems uh relatively soon but i guess that well the trailer was also here's the title, and it was self-referential, like, we have nothing. That's true. Raven said, this probably seems insignificant to most people, but Story of Seasons and Rune Factory for PlayStation. Ooh! Yeah, Rune Factory

5 got a trailer. I'm stoked for that game. I can't remember if that was timed around E3, but that game I can't remember if that was timed around E3 but that game looks like a huge improvement over Room Factory 4, a game I really like Steven said

friend of the show is Steven Hilger from Into the Ether I think they're all friends of the show Raven, I'm sorry you're also a very good friend of the show and we appreciate you uh sable uh what is sable sable oh it it looks like the um what's that artist's name oh my gosh yeah he did work on the uh the version of dune that never came out

oh oh my god oh oh totarovsky yeah well that's the director but mobius was i think one of the artists one of the artists who worked on it mean gene okerlund mean gene okerlund i can't remember anyway sable looks cool it was announced at 2018 and e3 and i guess now has a uh a demo and a release date. That was exciting to Steven. Also, the biggest pleasant surprise was Metroid Dread. I got into Metroid via Fusion, and Dread seems to be a spiritual successor, at least based on the vibes in the trailer.

Extremely excited for both. Absolutely. I mean, Metroid Dread was very exciting for me. This week, what else have you guys been playing? What else have you been? I wanted to talk about Game Builder Garage on Switch. Oh, yeah. on switch uh because i it's great i picked it up and just finished uh so it basically has these seven interactive tutorials where it leads you through a number of steps to make different games so it starts you out with like a very simple kind of platformer dealio and then there's like a uh one that uses the motion sensor in the switch to like roll a ball around and there's a racing

game and a little like 3d adventure game uh and it is really cool and then you can sort of put those games in your own sort of collection your own library which you can then share with other people and you can punch in uh like these codes to download other people's games off the internet and they're like very very simple things it honestly the biggest touch point you could use is uh like little big planet 2 when they started to introduce like these visual programming uh concepts i think little big planet 2 introduced like uh the the microchip that you could like put a bunch of logic on and then like put that on different shit and it basically like opened up hey now you can make uh doom or whatever uh somebody's already made doom in game builder garage uh so like i

don't think it's going to be like little big planet level where like you it has a huge long tail and people are always talking about like hey here's what you can accomplish on game builder garage but as somebody who has like a very basic understanding of programming language and how programming works in games uh i fucking loved sort of tearing through the the interactive tutorials and i also think like if you're somebody who is curious about programming this is a really good starting point to like you're not gonna know you know uh java by the end of it but you'll have a really really good grasp on the basic concepts of programming by these little creatures called nodons

that do all these different functions that you can connect together to make games. It's, and it also has that like, what was the cardboard? I can't believe I forgot this, the Nintendo. Yeah, the Labo, like that aesthetic of just like everything is so pleasant and it's so like nice to kind of like walk through things and figure it out and there are little

programming puzzles that you have to solve to move on uh that that are also really enjoyable i think it's great i finished all the interactive tutorials over the course of like a few days so it's not like gonna take you a super long time but i'm also the smartest man alive so it may take you a little bit longer if you don't have a big cool brain like mine uh i wanted to talk about a game that everyone can play at home without paying money it's called tunic um they released a time limited demo so that i think the demo gets removed sometime in the week of june like like late june basically so play it now if you can. You can play it on Xbox One.

You can play it on Xbox Series X. I think it's just on Xbox platforms. It's basically a throwback to like Zelda 1 era, which is to say it's a top-down like action RPG like Zelda 1. You play as a fox. It uses like low poly art style and is just very focused on like

exploration, like, hey, oh, there's like a secret, you know, cave behind this wall that I need to break open, and there's pots to break, and you're finding different items, it has like a, just like a retro Zelda vibe that I found really charming and easy to jump into while you know as with all indie games has a Dark Souls-y thing where there are like effectively bonfires that you can rest at to regain your health and then you're finding shortcuts to like backtrack

to bonfires really just very charming look and feel it has no release date it's been in development for fucking five or six years at this point. I'm hopeful. I mean, it feels really good, but again, it's just a demo slice. So who knows?

But maybe, who knows this year? I don't know. That'd be nice. But play it for free right now because there's no reason not to. It sounds good. Next week, we're going to talk about the best games so far. Just so far. It's been, I would say, a bit of a slow year so far,

and it's going to get slower as we go. But we're going to take a moment to just take a step back and say, hey, look at all these games. Which are the best? Which were we too kind to? Which were we too mean to? You know, serve a half year interview. Which are three. It'll be fun. Which are the best? Which were we too kind to? Which were we too mean to? You know, serve a half of your interview. Which are three?

It'll be fun. Which are three? What? No. I also wanted to mention there's a good shot that I won't be here next week because I'm very, very close to having a baby. What?

You're not showing at all. Thank you, thank you. Very svelte. I think he is. No, I'm just kidding. You look amazing. Is this the announcement? Because I thought we had like embargoed this and we had a whole rollout. With you like showing a little bit of a bump and like coming soon on Snapchat.

Yeah, I've been posting my stories and then forgot that my Instagram was private. So no one can actually see them. So I apologize for that. Yeah, so... Justin Jr. will be here before you know it. Jeju, love it. What? No, I don't think that's exactly right.

So yeah, I'll be gone for a little bit. Just a heads up there. I'll miss you, Russ. Not because I'm fighting with everyone, although just a little bit, maybe that. Always a little bit, maybe that Always a little bit We got a Twitter At the Besties Pod, you can follow us there

But we really would appreciate if you would Leave a rating or a view on a podcast Catcher of your choice, or spread the word Word of mouth is the best way for this show To continue to exist It lives by your good graces So please continue that support. But that is going to do it for us.

So until next time, my name is Justin McElroy. Be sure to join us again next time for the besties. Because shouldn't the world's best friends make the world's best games? Besties!