The Besties - Resident Evil 8-age and the Briefcase of Fun

Episode Date: May 14, 2021

The gang's all together to celebrate yet another actual video game release! Today we're diving into Resident Evil Village, with the first-half dedicated to first impressions and the second half diving into the first half of the game. We know, it's confusing. But at least the property values are low! 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!

Griffin, I think this might be an intervention. You might have a handheld problem. I don't think that that's true. Let's talk through what exactly happened. You went and you purchased a retro handheld device that you really, really liked. It didn't work good, though, so I had to get another one. And then I did get a third one of a different form factor.

But the form factor is different. Right. It's just vertical instead of horizontal, but they play the same games. But let me talk. My childhood was difficult. Yeah. Griffin had a difficult childhood.

I had a difficult childhood, and you know who was there for me? My friend, Donkey Kong, the strong ape. And his friend and enemy, mario who jumps and gunstar heroes and so i need these retro handhelds russ when i'm going through a tough time in my life because i'm not sleeping and i'm covered in piss and shit all day long is i spend money on tech sure to help myself feel better and does it work no but what else am i gonna do try what am i what do i try else hard drugs you want me to do hard drugs close enough friends with mario to call him jump man um he doesn't like that yeah that's not his

name his name is mario. Oh, okay. Yeah. Do you like when I call you Glasses guy? Glasses Games Journalist guy? No. Your name's Chris. That would describe like half of the people who work in my profession. Yeah. Yeah, it also would describe-

I'm a podcaster. Nobody calls me talk boy. It would describe everybody on this telephone call presently. But yeah, thanks for putting me on blast, Russ. Sorry. It's fine. A great energy a great energy time for a great show better watch out i'm gonna give my friend donkey kong a strong don't kick your your little hiney My name is Justin McElroy, and I know the best game of the week. My name is Griffin McElroy, and I know the best game of the week. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant, and I know the best scares of the week.

My name is Ross Frost, and I know the best scares of the week. Hello, 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, my friend, you are a member. Every week, we look at a new game or some old games. We really run the gamut here anymore because nobody's making games anymore thanks a lot c19 as my daughter calls it but hey we got a big one this week a big new release resident evil they lidge i'm trying to combine eight and village because it is Resident Evil 8 but it's Resident Evil 8 well they chopped the fucking L

to get the Roman numeral in there and so like the bottom part of it L is not a pronounceable letter character at all yes it is it's the 8th Resident Evil game so let me give you the history of the franchise ready

they did 4 that were fine and the 5th and 6th ones Evil game. So let me give you the history of the franchise. Ready? They did four that were fine, and the fifth and sixth ones were bad, and then the seventh one was good, and it was in first person. And so they did that again. And so they did that again. This is the second one of that sort of arc or movement

of the Resident Evil franchise. Chris Payne, what exactly is this game in particular? This game is the sequel to Resident Evil 7. It Payne, what exactly is this game in particular? This game is the sequel to Resident Evil 7. It's a first-person shooter, and there are some scary bits, but there are also some not scary bits, and it rules. And we're going to talk about Resident Evil 8 Village.

So this one is, we're going to break this up. We should mention right up at the top, we're going to be going spoiler- free the first half and i'm spoiler and i'm going to leave griffin's gonna leave because he hasn't played enough of it he doesn't want spoilies and then we're gonna talk up until the second boss fight boss i was doing a little uh streaming uh on my uh i'm using that Backbone One controller through my phone doing a little Steam Link play which for Resident Evil I've found

works well enough. But my four-year-old son Henry saw something on my phone that he may have seen a hand get cut off in a way where he's like, hey, what's that? And I was like, nothing! Look at the TV. your watch the fixies watch your fizzy toy show baby do not look at the gore so i fucked that up

pretty bad that was uh yeah in in my in my defense though this game is half getting your hand cut off yeah there's a lot it's tough to it's tough to find a segment of this of the video game footage to show your four-year-old son where you're not being de-handitated. It almost makes you wonder why are you showing them. I wasn't for this at all. I was sitting next to him on the couch, streaming on the old phone.

He caught a glimpse of something he shouldn't have seen. For people who haven't played the game yet, or I guess haven't played the Modern Resident Evil series, the way this works is there's a man named Ethan and his girlfriend or partner? Well, now wife. I don't know what the relationship is. Now wife. In the last game, she disappeared.

He went to the house of a southern family who had been infected with mold of some sort, turned them into monsters, killed them all, and then realized, uh-oh, the Umbrella Corporation, famous from the Resident Evil films, is somehow maybe tied to this.

And let me say, as somebody who experienced truly catastrophic water damage earlier this year during the ice storms in Texas, mold is not something to fuck around with. It's scary. It's scarier than zombies. Also, if you've watched any House MD, you know it's always almost always

mold yeah yeah never lupus always mold i think what's uh if you did not play seven uh as justin alluded to earlier it was a backpedaling from five and six which were much more action oriented blockbuster big beefy bros like just you know blowing up zombie helicopters and doing all kinds of wild shit and then seven was a much more intimate experience inside of a scary like southern manner i mean it was scary it was like like very few weapons for most of it i i say this with the caveat being i was literally too scared to play that game yeah i played the demo it was too scary for me because too much of that is you're in a dark house and all you've got is like a little puny whatever knife or something and i was like nope mannequins are moving can't do it

so i i went into this very cautious because i was like am i going to actually be able to play this new fancy resident evil game and i can confirm that indeed I can. This game is not very scary. Although it is fun. Resident Evil 7 is actually only scary for the first maybe two or three hours. Too scary. I know, but then after that, it like turns

into Saw. Like there's like an entire like stage where the brother of the family is like, welcome to my trap chamber, bro. And you're like, yeah. I don't want to play that either though. Oh no, it's pretty good. an entire like stage where the brother of the family is like welcome to my trap chamber bro and you're like yeah i don't want to play that either though that's not oh no it's it gets it's so resident evil 7 gets like very campy sure like the the the fights the boss fights especially i mean the designs of like the the creatures or whatever is, you know, universally terrifying, but like the characters in that game are so over the top caricatures that it's,

it, it becomes like a campy action or campy horror movie, which worked like Resident Evil seven was a tremendous success because of that. Resident Evil eight doesn't even give you those first few scary hours. Resident Evil eight is a fucking circus from the jump. Yeah. What I love about 7 and 8

that I think is the huge, vast improvement over the games previous to this, even the first trilogy, which were pretty good, it is relentlessly creative in the sense that it is always giving you something new to do. It's a bit, right.

And you're doing a bit and it's like a new thing that you're experiencing. And it is not that grind of like, well, now I got to run back to this hallway and there'll probably be some more dogs there. And now I got to run back over here to get the thing there. There are still like, you know, get the Bishop key and put it in the bishop oh my god but like uh there this is much more about like

seven and I would say even more so in eight about like scenes and beats and like this is the bit where you are doing this and it's like you know how everybody references that one thing in Resident Evil where the dogs jump through the window yeah Because it was like a concrete thing that happened. Like, this is one of the scary things that happens in this. This 7 and 8 are like just loaded with those. Sorry, I just want to set up how 8 works too since we've kind of established 7. Yeah, please. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So the beginning is that Ethan and his now wife have had a child named Rose. Very young. Very strangely portrayed visually in the game. And through a- Never been a good video game, baby. The streak continues. Okay, so through a series of events, Ethan has to go to what I assume is Eastern Europe.

And now instead of the kind of like southern family monsters it's a family ish of fairy tale monsters uh and this is my kind of big theory of what resident evil is doing right now is i think it's a horror anthology now yes i think it's last the last game was like texas chainsaw massacre southern horror inspired Now we're getting this like very, very clearly fairy tale, fairy tale, Eastern Europe inspired. I hope game to game now they're going to start doing this. Like the next game we might get like 1990s Japanese horror, or we might get, you know, 1970s American slasher campus horror. That would be a great way to kind of do what justin's talking about of

keeping this fresh rather than the mistake that they did with the original series which is well we're just going to kind of make the game over and over again and just keep upping the ante yeah and then that just always leads to like you're fighting somebody in a volcano punching and building on mythology in the first ones it was like i hope you really are deep in the resident evil slash umbrella corporation lore because we're going to be like it is constantly referred to and characters are going to show up where you're supposed to have some reaction to them you know which you may not have and this is very like it feels much more self-contained like this is exactly what is

happening in this in this there is a very funny i will say so you so you arrive in this village and there's like this aspect of you exploring and then you meet some survivors and i'm like bracing myself i'm like okay i need to like oh that guy is like paranoid and he's not really into what's going on and that girl she's uh you know worried about uh other people dying and her dad and i'm like okay i gotta keep oh no i actually don't because everyone you meet is dying literally five seconds later there's a line of dialogue where he says how come everyone keeps dying and i want to reach into the game and be like it's resident evil baby that's how they do but they never like they spent so much time and effort actually like doing clearly motion capture

and like setting up these characters and nope total waste of time 30 seconds it's a good stake raising though i think it i think it helps to humanize like the anyway the the uh what i think is mechanically pretty cool about this entry is that you are um it's got like a great like video gamey structure right the village is very much a hub world where you're going through and like there's stuff you can't unlock yet you got to find this key and you can't do this because you can't raise wells yet or whatever uh and you are venturing off of the of the hub into domains sort of overseen by different big bads. If you've seen Lady

Dimitrescu. Dimitrescu. I almost said Fortescue. Lady Dimitrescu, she's like the first of these big bads that you have to go in and you know, give them the old chin music.

And then you make your way after that. I don't think you could give her chin music. She's nine and a half feet tall. No, you need a stepladder to give her chin music. But you make your way back to the hub world after that. It's constantly bringing you back into this environment that feels like familiar. And it's a very nice ebb and flow, I flow i think between the you know a a lot of horror

games do this thing where they're constantly pushing you into new environments and new scares and you don't have that second to just be like okay it's okay right now and i'm venturing away from this place where i feel safer um and that's really cool because you go back and it does feel like a second to like very satisfying video game sense of like let me sell all my treasure let me upgrade my guns okay i'm ready for the next thing and then you go out into the you make the choice like okay i'm going into this very scary place and i don't know what's going to happen but it's going to be uh uh completely unfamiliar so i i will also say to that point you mentioned selling all your treasure and upgrading your guns that is back from resident evil 4 which i think like i love resident evil 4

and i think a lot of people see as the magnum opus of the series but it is also where the series started to get way more action oriented because that's where you get the merchant and you get the auto shotgun and like all of this different shit and that is more or less back here in eight and also back here in eight i think is a much bigger emphasis on combat um i i have just finished the first sort of set piece that that justin alluded to and when i got back to the hub world it was a fucking brawl like it was it was a full-blown like shootout uh in a in a in a to to a degree that seven just never really did yeah and seven maybe one maybe two like uh fodder enemies would come at you at a time and they were pretty tough to kill in this one like four five like yeah i filled

a little house full of them and then i threw a stick of dynamite or whatever yeah and just like and you blow just like and you blow them up and you get their treasure to sell it and it's i'm not saying it's bad but it is like uh different like it's different it's not it it's it's wild because the the opposite is what they did in seven and that's what people love so much about seven it's what i loved about seven and i'm yeah it's it's what's cool is it's still scary it's just a different balance right like what i really enjoy about this one that i i hate in games where you have a gun i hate when every bullet that you miss feels like i should just restart like i've only got six bullets i should just restart this whole game and delete

my save and start over because and this one like pretty generous with with the ammo and like it is very much like hey you got six guys on you you should probably start shooting them like and don't wait and save your shotgun ammo for the end of the game like it's not that hard to find more or make more just start shooting people because you're in a pretty sticky scenario um and they pop up and like and it feels like you're encouraged to if you miss a few bullets like the enemies do that terrible resident evil thing where they're shambling until the exact moment you're about to fire and then they're like juke out of the way but it doesn't feel like catastrophic it just feels like okay

well let me you know keep keep peppering them with bullets because i can find more or make more pretty easily can we talk about just environment design because holy shit that castle in particular yeah is like outrageously incredible i like i will be honest i think it might be the best looking game ever i'm sorry i think it might be the best looking game ever made i think it might be the best looking game like of memory like i can't like the a lot of the the um environments and characters look almost photorealistic. Yeah, it's creepy. I mean, if you're watching a trailer for this game, like it almost is in that boundary,

like, is this filmed? Like it looks filmed and everything is so like lushly decorated and gorgeous. Because I played it and it often looked like smears of runny paint, but I was playing on Stadia. So it might be what a great reveal um yeah yeah we'll talk about that later that was the stadia version just says welcome chris plant and it's all very chris plant specific his pictures are because he's the only person on the planet playing credit how good the game is because I, this is no joke,

lost about three to four hours just getting it to work. But once I got it to work, I am determined to play through this whole game because it's so good. I will suffer whatever headaches I have. I do want to mention, though, I was a little bit disappointed that, and I don't, I mean, i don't know how worried people are spoilers the castle is really presented and like lady d has been like all over their marketing materials as like the game like there's a village and then there's a castle suffice to say the castle is not

most of the game it's really just like the first act of the game and i was a little bit disappointed just because like how incredibly cool and interesting that environment was to just sort of like leave it behind i was kind of bummed but it is in capcom's in capcom's defense i don't know that they're now that's welcome i don't know that they could have predicted that twitter would see lady dimitrescu and say like i want her to stand on my throat until I die. Have you seen Twitter? Yeah. I felt so happy while I was playing that with this giant. All you'll want to be is someone who gets to see a giant woman. And this giant woman will chase you to the house.

And I was so happy playing this thinking that there's going to be a segment. And not a huge segment. But there's going to be a segment and not a huge segment but there's going to be a segment of this audience who it is just 100 their shit you know in a sexual way that is so deep and pleasurable for them that they would have never dreamed in a million years this level of photorealism bringing their kink to life and i was so thrilled for them because that just must be the best that you go in for a scary game and it's a sexual Fantasia. I mean, come on.

That's gotta be the biggest thrill in the world. I was so pleased for them. Like even during it, like this isn't my thing, but it's somebody's thing. And they almost seem to be fully aware that it's somebody's thing because they are leaning into it in a major way yeah i

fresh congratulations by the way to building off what you said and what griffin said what i really dig about what capcom is doing right now is they're they're making things and just like throwing them out that like they made resident evil 7 and they're like that was a good interesting mix of formula we're gonna do it different this time. We're not just going to keep serving the same hamburger. And like this game, and again, we'll talk about this in the second half, about every hour and a half, it's like, I'm glad you enjoyed the game that we just gave you. I'm going to give you a new game now. Right.

It's like, great. I'm on board. I think we're about to probably move into that second half, which I not be here for because i have to go uh tend to my my uh spawn but i do want to say my one sort of uh qualm with the game is the puzzles are very like there's always a note right next to the puzzle that's like press the red button and then the blue button and turn the witch statue and it's like harder puzzles thank you no no i don't want harder puzzles but i just want like a literally there's one where there's like a safe with a combination lock on it and i i was like oh okay so i have to find the combination for this and then i found a

note that literally said look out the window i was like okay and i looked out the window and when you look out the window you can see the numbers that are the combination lock. Yeah, but only if you line up the window properly. That was kind of cute. It's not a fun... I cannot wait for you to play the next part of the game. Okay. We'll bring it up briefly next episode to hear what your thoughts are,

because I'm very curious what you think of it. Okay. You're too smart for this game, Griffin. Too damn smart. All right, well, have fun talking about the rest of the guys. I hope, does Wesker, okay, blink twice if Wesker shows up. I'm not gonna say

who blinked and winked. Thanks, Griff. And thanks to you for listening. We'll be back in just a second to talk about the second half. Now it's time for Resident Evil After Dark, where we talk about all those dirty spoilers from the first half of the game.

We won't be spoiling. I haven't played beyond that. So up to the second half. Yeah, just the second boss fight. I'll be more specific. Basically, there's the castle is the first area and then there's you go back to the village and then there's an area after the castle we're going to be talking through that second area and then stopping at the end of that second area so

if you don't want to hear about the end of the game don't worry the dollhouse to bail we're talking about the dollhouse the dollhouse the dolls okay can i set something up thematic i want to return right back to what plant was talking about. Then we edited it. And now I'm referring to something that no one heard, but I want to talk about the setup for this game a little bit. Uh, I have been talking to Russ about how, when people make games,

they, it, or movies or whatever, and they introduce children as part of it. It is usually very clear if the person in like sort of crafting the story has kids or not because it is it is so evident when someone doesn't know how depraved or horrifying or disturbing something is when it relates to a baby yes um and this game from the very beginning puts a baby in danger and then does some like pretty dank stuff with the baby in question, namely splitting it into different jars. Um, but then it kind of backtracks on it. that out and you think oh there are organ baby parts yeah in these jars and then later it's like

actually the baby turned into a crystal and it's pieces of like crystal baby oh i didn't really which is still super gross yeah and i actually don't know if there are parts of this game that hit me really hard and that were very scary i i want to specifically refer to the segment in the dollhouse when you are getting chased by a a monster that sounds like an actual like babbling baby i think it's a recording of like an actual babbling baby that has been processed through some sort of like distortion filter that as a parent, I was like, it's triggering some biological stuff too of like you hear a baby crying and it's like your body tenses up and it's like, okay, I have to do something. And it's like leaning into that. And as a parent, I felt so like, wow, this is very, very, very intense for me.

And I don't know how intentional it is. Like, I don't know if they meant for it to be, like, so terrifying. That seems like someone would know exactly the reaction that you would get out of a parent. Yeah, it feels that way, yeah. I think the second part is really when it shows its hand, which is to say, like, as Plant said in the first half, you know, we got you through the castle. You had a good time. You solved puzzles.

You shot bells. Everyone had a good time. We're going to give you something completely different. You know, again, I didn't play a lot of Seven, but like this feels like even more of a drastic change in so far as it goes

from an action game to effectively it is a horror.'ve got no weapons it is a horror puzzle solving game and you're being chased by this creepy baby and it kind of just escaped the room right yeah and you're not even being chased by the baby the baby happens at the very end of it for for most of this this section it's just a puzzle. It's just a very large puzzle. But it's scary. Where you are constantly positive it's about to break bad. Yes, yes.

Which is great because they've earned it, right? They bought this environment where like, I don't know, something could jump out and kill you at any moment. And it does not happen. It's so wild. Yeah, they were smart about it. It's very clear that like in the same way that like Seven, I think, took lot of inspiration from pt um this also does insofar as you're like traversing a lot of the same hallways but like different shit is happening each time you go down those

hallways um the puzzles again are like they're interesting puzzles i don't think they're hard puzzles um but the environments both in the castle and in this environment are so like like handcrafted and like believable that it really grounds the experience in what is otherwise like a pretty ridiculous situation um that makes the scary parts even scarier because it's like oh i could see myself being in this environment um yeah i want to talk about it was really really cool yeah can we just dig into the puzzles really quickly sure i i think the puzzle i disagree with griffin about them by the way i think they're kind of neat yeah i well i think the puzzles especially in this second area are brilliant not in like the

oh brilliant like wow what creative puzzle design they really thought it out but more that they are balanced perfectly because being in this tense scary setting the last thing I want to do is pull out my phone and look for a guide. So it needs to feel challenging enough that it's a puzzle, but it can't be a whole lot more challenging than that because it needs to keep me immersed. And like, I think there's like a humility almost in design of being like, okay, we're not going to make this super challenge. We know that like, we need to make this flow naturally, but also it can't like,

it still has to be somewhat like an escape room. It still has to have some challenge. I just thought there's like a level of like design grace in, in that stage that just really struck me as as as being inspired on the boss right there they also do a better job i think of integrating the puzzle into the world yeah where it always felt so incongruous in most resident evil games i you know i joked about like find the bishop's key and then put it in like and this this lock is based on chess boards for like no reason that thematically is tied to anything else just like i don't know this one is like there's you're gonna get the ace of diamonds and then the other thing and like they're really

tying the puzzles into the environment in a way that feels much like it still is wild why is this an environment why is this a thing but it is tied to what, like for the second area, there's this giant doll where you have to roll the eye to see the solution to one of the puzzle. And you basically are dismantling this doll in a way that like feels bad. You don't want to be doing it,

but it is part of the puzzle. Yeah, it's bizarre. Yeah, you know, and I think the sound design, not only through this section, but also throughout the entire game is really spectacular. I think if you can play this game with headphones, it definitely makes a huge difference. Obviously, it's up to you whether you want to play it in a well lit room like I do, because I'm scared. But I think it is worth it for the audio design alone. And what's cool, depending on what your platform you're playing on, I played on PS5. And what's cool, depending on what platform you're playing on, I played on PS5, and any old headphones you just plug into the controller will work with the 3D audio technology, so you can kind of get that pretty cheap, that experience. Yeah.

Which is cool. Cool. Justin, there's a thing that you were talking about in the first half about how you can really feel the video gaminess of it, right? Like, it's just the hub world and everything. And I've really really really appreciated that um the the lady dimitrescu or lady dimitrescu i think is what they call her in the game it's a polish translation yeah but that that that area it it's supposed to feel open but it is quite linear if you are actually just doing everything in the right order. And it's so nice to play a big AAA beautiful game that is intentional. I mean, as somebody who loves open world games, it is nice every once in a while to play something that's like, oh, you really thought out where you want me to go. And you were kind of leading me along. I feel like I could go anywhere. But the truth is, there's only one right direction to go.

And it has like a natural rhythm and a cadence that builds up to, I mean, the boss fight, which is just quite large. You know, again, this is spoilery. She turns into a giant demon monster. And everybody still wants to make love to her is apparently what i'm saying i've seen on twitter which also seems fine like you know i mean yeah no i i like that the pacing of it really does lead you along but i also like the fact that like the game uh here's like a dumb thing that i really appreciated is the game will tell you if you've found everything in a room so that like frustration you might have of like well i don't think i've searched entirely well it'll actually like highlight in the map when you open up the map

whether everything has been found in that room i think there's good and bad in that right like people that are like really obsessed will look in every corner until you find a little glowing orb of treasure. But for me, I don't know. I found it nice to be able to like, before I was able to move on from that area or that like the castle, for example, I just like did another pass of all the rooms that I hadn't found everything in

just to see if there was anything of note and like found a new puzzle and like a little side area that I hadn't been in before so i thought like i i found that kind of a momentum killer a little bit for me because i am and this is more about just who i like i'm not going to move on until i find all the things in the room and so for me it was this thing of like like find an item bring out the map yeah nope there's something else here okay let me look around i found an item let me bring up the map like that really took me out of the immersion yeah maybe that's something i don't know how you solve for that except it's better in the um in the second area because

there's no items either you know like you're not getting like health or ammo or anything so i i appreciated that because it was like it was a lot more binary like have i gotten everything yeah maybe that's something that should have showed up in a New Game Plus kind of thing. Yeah, it also tells you when there's just nothing in the area. So I did appreciate that in terms of momentum where it was like, I just know this is an area where I can look around and see pretty things. There are also some things that are not displayed

as you found them or you didn't find them. There's little goats that are hidden throughout the world that you can break, and I don't know what they do oh those don't count no those those do not appear in it most of the hell um yeah i i i really dig this game the other thing um that i i've found myself doing with this game and just games in general lately is trying to role play them which maybe sounds silly silly to people. I don't know. Like by that, I mean, like when I played a video game as a kid, naturally, I imagined myself in the game. Like I would play, you know, Harvest Moon or whatever, Super Mario. And it was like, I am

here. Like I am connected in some way to this. I feel like I'm having an adventure. And then like as an adult, it became like, oh, I am aware of video game systems. I am accomplishing the tasks. And almost seeing systems kind of frustrated me because I needed all I needed the game to do a lot of the work for me to make me feel like I was escaping. I needed like the the systems to disappear. I had trouble playing Japanese RPGpgs for this reason and more recently i i've i've really made an effort to be like when i sit down and play a game to like allow myself to like put myself into the game and with this game what i found is like i try to be the director if that makes sense like there's a sequence where you go across a creaky old bridge, and you could run across it,

but I very intentionally found myself going slow and kind of panning across and trying to play my part in making this a fun, scary game. In the same way that when you go through a haunted house, you have to buy in. And if I have a piece of advice, again, as strange as it sounds, it's like these games are best when you really buy into them and you you kind of meet the game halfway it is kind of funny though i think i think you can absolutely play that way and there were moments

in the game especially in the dollhouse where i was playing it that way but i can't turn off the part of my brain that is like i know i just got the first pistol i know they're telling me to upgrade it it is a waste of money to upgrade that first pistol i should not do it i know there's another pistol coming so it's hard for me to turn off that like dumb gamey part of my brain but yeah they're also though like i have had no but this is just like a tip a gameplay tip i have i've had no problems with money i mean like keeping all the getting all the upgrades that i would want for guns um selling the old guns i fully upgraded the pistol um and then sold it when i got the new pistol you got ethan the y-nab upgrade right you have you using

you need a budget i don't know i don't know what that deep cut is. That's a little unspoken. Money bouncing humor. No, I was worried about that too. I almost didn't, but I was like, I'll be more, my theory was this. If I'm going to be using this gun at all, ammo is going to be at more of a premium than money is. Yeah. So I should make these bullets that I'm spending count. So I'm budgeting my bullets,

my upgrading my guns. It's mostly because when I played Resident Evil 4, which continues to be my favorite Resident Evil game ever, like there was the gun. I think it was the Red 9, I think it's called, which is like my favorite gun maybe in any Resident Evil game ever. And I was like, that's all I want is like this old timey, like has like a stock for stability, this great pistol. And so I was like just waiting for like the equivalent of that to show up so again you don't need to play like my dumb self like upgrade whatever you want it's it's entirely your game and they give you a sniper rifle pretty early sniper rifles excellent and it

i know it's good it feels bad like i don't like like as soon as they give me a sniper rifle there's a bit where there's like bats flying around in the sky vampire bats flying around the sky and just felt i don't want to do that i don't want to do that i'll waste the bullets i'm not good this is not my skill it also basically doesn't i'll i'll lure them down to the ground and then hit them with an axe or something yeah it doesn't it doesn't really have much of a scope when you get it at first so it's kind of strange that you get it and it's like i don't know and with the sky you can barely see the things also those goblins or whatever they are yeah you just wait for them to come at you. You shoot them once with a bullet.

They fall to the ground. You pull out your knife and you just start stabbing. And then the goblin friends come over and they get in the way of the stabby crossfire. They're on the ground. Now they're stabbed. I used maybe one bullet in that entire area just stabbing those things. Yeah, I like that it's not a hard game, though. Like, you know, I think games...

It's very generous with the health. Like, there's a lot of times where I thought I was dead, and then I would get hit, and it's like, I'm not quite dead. I have one more chance. Like, please just make it out of Potion, Justin. Please. The only time that I, like, replayed a few...

There were a few sections early on that are, insta fail do this or you're dead moments and uh but those are very few like the normal gameplay like even in boss fights i did not find myself dying a lot i'm sure on higher difficulty levels if you played on like hardcore or whatever it'd be much harder but uh if you're just looking to have a good time it actually is incredibly well balanced for that yeah we should have put this spoiler in the non spoiler section. But there's a part where you are going to be going through or you've already done this underground area and a like rolling log covered in spikes comes towards you. And there are two, I don't know boxes for you to break, but you can't break them.

So you run to them, try to break them, doesn't work. And then you're supposed to turn around and see that there's a little hole in the wall, and you should go hide in that hole. Now, again, on Stadia, I don't want to beat up Stadia too much here, because I've heard other people have had this problem not using this. I could not distinguish the hole in the wall.

So I had to look at a guide after like replaying this area like five or six times. But I've heard from other people that like, even if you have, you know, that RTX life, that still is like not very clear. I died like six or seven times during that sequence just because I didn't know what they wanted me to do. And it was very stupid because you have to listen to this dumb audio file of the guy screaming like American hamburgers every time you die. And so I, yeah, no, thankfully those moments

are few and far between. I do want to give Plant just two minutes. Why the hell are you playing on Stadia? Oh, so I'm traveling right now to see family after the pandemic. So I went to Ohio very briefly. And now I'm in California with my in-laws. And I'm actually quarantining right now, even though I know the CDC, we're just trying to be extra safe. We have a lot of I don't need to go into it. But I'm here and I didn't bring a video game console. So I needed to find some way to play this game. And the only solution that I could find was Stadia. And it was a journey.

I won't share every detail of it. I'll probably write about it on Polygon.com. It sucked so much. But the flip side is once I got the game going, it makes me really excited for a future where I can play whatever I want, wherever I want. It makes me really appreciate Game Pass, which I've been playing its beta recently. And I don't know if I can talk too much about it other than like, hey, it works. Yeah, it'll be a great thing once we're there. But, you know, I feel like i've been saying that for 10

years yeah um i think it's very close but not quite it's so close and and and again credit to stadia here resident evil 8 is playable like i can play the game it looks like i'm playing it on like i don't know an xbox one and like every once in a while it's a little fuzzy. The resolution fluctuates quite a bit, and this is with, I think, a pretty good internet connection and using even a Google Wi-Fi setup, and I'm a foot away from it. But yeah, it's sadly not what it needs to be. That's okay. Thankfully, this is a very good game, and I think we all had a really good time with it. I've beaten it at this point, but I don't want to talk about the second. It's not a terribly long game, I should say. It's like eight to ten hours maximum.

So if you've gotten to the dollhouse, that's about halfway. But yeah, I've beaten it. I won't speak to the second half, but I enjoyed it overall. I think it's a lot of fun. Shall we talk about some questions? Yes. Okay. Some questions from our wonderful and brilliant listeners. We don't have Griffin here for one of these questions.

So I'm actually going to save the question of is Griffin Ethan Winter's question. I don't think it looks like him. People are saying that the shot of him looks, I don't think it looks like him. People are saying that the shot of him looks, I don't think it looks like him. I don't necessarily see it. Yeah, I don't particularly see it, but we can ask him his opinion when he's here. Okay, this one is from Kikasaurus Rex.

I've really enjoyed other RE games, but I'm not a huge fan of first person. Is the game hindered at all by the switch from classic third person? So do I think this would be be basically to narrow that down do i think this would be a better game if it was in third person like resident evil 4 was um no i think i mean if you're not a huge fan of first person i think that is a hindrance like you would probably like it better in third person i think if you don't personally mind first

person games i think it just feels different i think it feels a little more um claustrophobic in first person a little more um immersive in first person it's cool that you can like get right up on like tapestries and stuff like that and really look at the detail in first person um but what's interesting is that it feels balanced almost like a third person game because it really starts getting very heavy in the action which is somewhat tough to do in first person when you're moving around somewhat slowly um i don't think that's a bad thing it's just it's just different uh but if you don't dig first person games might not be for you uh okay second question this one's from uh michaela tweeting

how deep into the secrets do you go uh are you a completionist i recently found a new side area for the treasure hunt quest and geeked out on it a bit um i just found my first like sub area with like the treasure chest and like a mini boss i was happily surprised it was not a thing i expected to be in the game um so i i i personally think it's like a great addition that i don't remember anything quite like that in resident evil 7 yeah or even in four like there there is a lot of like oh i'm gonna go going to go back through this village. And now that I have this key, but actually I need to like use this boat to reach this other area that I haven't been to before. There's like a lot of that. And you can see these treasure chests on the map.

So they are really enticing. I really liked it. I thought it was satisfying and smart. I don't think they're like on the level of like, you know, the Tomb Raider puzzles from like the Tomb Raider reboot that were like really thoughtful side puzzles. They're generally pretty simple, but I liked it. It was a nice touch. And Justin,

this is probably one for you. This is from Patrick. How do y'all feel about the, about 10 hours-ish runtime? This is something I'm interested in, but 60 to 70 bucks seems steep for a shortish game. I mean, that's tough if you, I mean, the money equation is always tough. Like, I've been on record since I've been a game journalist for 15 years that like I'd rather a game be something you want to return to repeatedly and never wears out as welcome as just pleasurable from beginning to end rather than spending that money to have my time sort of wasted. I mean so for sure like I want it to be as long as it comfortably is and you have to make that value proposition for yourself.

be as long as it comfortably is um and you have to make that value proposition for yourself i do want to add something to this and i don't think this is a spoiler because it's been in every resident evil game basically ever um and this one especially uh the new game plus features in this game are spectacular they give you so many reasons to run through this game again and um like genuinely like the minute you beat it you're like oh i want to run through this game again. And like genuinely, like the minute you beat it, you're like, oh, I want to go through this game again. You know, there's new weapons. They unlock this list of like 70 challenges with like mini achievements, a whole like side currency system. It is like incredibly full featured. So if you're worried about 10 hours, but you feel like you're the sort of person that will like get into that of like replaying sections on higher difficulties with like different gear and stuff. There's plenty of that.

So you should know that as well. Yeah, I'm definitely going to play this game again. It's like where I'm at with it right now. And you're going to have a lot of opportunities to do that in 2021. I believe there will be some periods where there ain't a lot of new games to enjoy very quickly anything else y'all are playing right now no I was playing next week we're doing

Subnautica Below Zero so I've been playing that sort of in the background but outside of that it's basically that and Resident Evil I don't think I have no still dipping into like Undermine every once in a while. But other than that, just this.

I've been just picking through old movies. I watched Serpico. Oh, boy. What a great movie, you know? Yeah, Al Pacino. He's going to go far. He's a real talent. He's got a career ahead of him.

I think that's it. Justin, take it away. Yeah, Russ already spoiled it but next week we're talking about Subnautica Below Zero so get in there and get some thoughts on that if you want to send us some questions on Twitter we're at thebestiespod

and we'll answer those to the best of our ability at thebestiespod on Twitter thanks for listening we really appreciate you and we're so happy you've been with us and be sure to join us again next time for the besties because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best

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