The Besties - Ridiculous Fishing EX is ridiculously good [Resties]

Episode Date: July 25, 2023

This week, the Resties dive deep into the waters of Ridiculous Fishing EX, an exceptional update of the brilliant decade-old mobile game. They also take a tour of Remnant 2, the sequel to "Dark Souls with guns." For the full list of games and much more, subscribe to the Besties/Resties newsletter at besties.fan! 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!

Hello everybody, my name is Christopher Thomas Blank. My name is Ross Froschdick. And welcome to The Resties, where the rest of the best discuss the best of the rest. This week we are talking about Ridiculous Fishing EX, the remake of the 10-year-old mobile game that absolutely devoured my life and did it all over again. I cannot wait to talk about it. We're also going to talk about Remnant 2, which is the sequel to Remnant of the Ashes. We'll be doing that in the back half. But before we do either of those things, I have to tell you about a movie I watched this week. Oh, boy.

So, no, no, no. Black and White, it's about a little girl who has never seen the light of day, and she's very sad about it. Until she meets the sun, yeah. No, I watched The Last Temptation of Christ. Oh, wow. Basically the same thing. Which was The Last Temptation of Cinema for me because I grew up in a Catholic household. You weren't allowed.

Well, like the church was like very adamant that you do not see this movie because it is the worst movie that could ever be seen. It would burn out your eyes. Yeah, I've not seen it, but my understanding is, like, Jesus does some stuff in that movie. Yeah, here's what he does, the boring stuff in the Bible. He just does all the boring stuff. Yeah, but doesn't he, isn't he, like, openly dating someone? No, he's just a human. Sexing.

No, he's like, man, you know what would be great? Being able to, like, have a wife and a family and then um harvey kytel shows up and he's like yeah that would be pretty cool right he's and then jesus is like no harvey kytel is judas oh and but he's just here's the problem the other problem about this movie all of the apostles are played by like they look like they just got off the l train and uh and then and then like everybody else is like actually looks like they're from the middle east and would belong in an actual period piece but then like willem dafoe plays jesus and he's like i'm losing my mind that's terrible but

no it it is in justin's word books level boring it's a really good well-made movie but it is as somebody who grew up like really deep into um you know sunday school yeah imagine like a marvel movie adaptation of that and that's what you get like there's literally a scene in the movie where like jesus is hanging out at a wedding right yeah and they're like just hanging out and it looks like just any dude hanging out and a guy comes up to me he's like oh jesus this sucks there's only two things of water and there's no more wine and and jesus goes hey go look in them go look in that jar. Tell me there's not more wine. And he's like, no, Jesus, I just looked in the jar.

It's water. And he goes, no, no, no, no. Go look. Tell me what's in there. And then Willem Dafoe like cheats out and like grins at the camera. And then he goes to open it. He's like, this is water. It's wine.

They're like, no way. And they keep doing it. This is Waters Wine. They're like, no way. And they keep doing it. Like every vignette for the first two hours of this movie is like, hey, you see that guy over there? Oh, yeah. What's going on with him?

He seems to like be a little confused and not sure where he's going. Yeah, because he's blind. But boom. And then Harvey Keitel like cuts to Harvey Keitel and he's like, everybody, did you just see that? Jesus cured that blind guy. It is like this sounds like I'm like dunking on like doing a parody of the dialogue. No, this is like borderline one for one. It rules. And if like I think the point is this is probably actually what it felt like to be in, like, Jesus' crew.

And the fact is— He was the Danny Zuko of his time. Dude, he was the Fonz. Like, he was the coolest guy on Earth. Yeah. And, hey, you know what? It also helps that he's played by Willem Dafoe, who I do think is maybe the coolest guy on Earth. Judas was the coolest guy on Earth? No, Willem Dafoe, who I do think is maybe the coolest guy on earth. Judas was the coolest guy on earth?

No, Willem Dafoe. Harvey Keitel plays Judas. Thank you. I'm confusing them. But yeah, it was very funny to watch it after all these years of being like, you know, especially as a child told that this is so bad. You really shouldn't watch it. And for it to be like just the most like familiar every day at Sunday school minus like there's nudity because people were naked back then. There's no like there's nothing objectionable apart from some nudity. There's temptation.

But but Jesus doesn't do anything. He the only thing that he does is get mad. That's why it's the last temptation because he's like, but Jesus doesn't do anything. The only thing that he does bad is get mad. That's why it's the last temptation, because he's like, no, I'm not having this anymore. No, no, no, no, no. I'm all done. And then happy ending, right? Well, I mean, in a way. I don't know if you're...

Eventually. It's complicated, you know? It's complicated. Well, lovely. I appreciate you adding some film education to the, to the mix, but good segue to the game that we're going to be playing, which involves fish. And you know, who loved fish? Jesus Christ. Okay, everybody we're back and we're gonna talk about ridiculous fishing ex now a game that

kind of caught me by surprise i didn't think of this as possible because the original developer of ridiculous fishing doesn't exist anymore as a studio yeah um yeah the original developers i mean there were a number of people that worked on it i know uh vlambeer obviously is one of the more known teams that worked on it and they uh that duo does not exist they don't work together anymore um greg woolwind i know did the art and zach gage did design work on ridiculous fishing and they more or less uh kind of reunited in a lot of ways with a new team called Co-op, spelled K-O-O-P, to essentially remake the game with a whole bunch of new features and aspects. And we should just say for like full transparency up top here,

you are close friends with Zach Gage. Yeah, I'm friends with Zach. And I'm like good buddies with JW from Flambier like this is a game that we very rarely have to give this this warning on these shows but this is a game where you know we know the people who made this game and I will add this and I've said this to anyone that I know in game development I will never ever talk about your shitty game if i don't like your game i'm not i mean whatever if i'm reviewing it i'll write a bad review of it but i will never like talk about your game that's bad that i don't like as a way to promote it because i'm friends with

you thankfully these are good yeah this is a good game and i'm happy to talk about it because it rocks i've talked about Zach's games before. And, yeah, it's very good. So basically the origin story of this game is they make a game called Radical Fishing in 2010, I believe. And that was Flash-based, I want to say? And it was a Flash-based game sold to a gaming web hub at the time. And I dug up there's an old feature on Ridiculous Fishing from Polygon. And Radical Fishing was conceptualized when JW was watching a TV program about fishermen, about tuna fishermen. And there was slow motion photography of the fish getting like hurled into the air.

And he was like, oh, you know what? If we put that together with some duck hunt, I think we have a game. And like as the story goes, he like basically wrote out the entire design of Radical Fishing in that instance. That's hilarious. It is like a like true like epiphany moment. And that was great. That game was really cool. um and then it came out to ios and there were no problems twist twist you you actually written about what happened yeah

there was there was they ran into a pretty common uh issue in the games industry which is essentially cloning like someone has a really good idea for a game and uh someone essentially beats them to market because you can't copyright gameplay mechanics and so like you'd have a game that was very similar to that where you'd be fishing and shooting fish out of the air but it was before ridiculous fishing actually was able to launch on ios and kind of you know scammed away some money from them basically yeah uh and basically they rushed to get this to market yeah effectively and there was a whole thing about they did a talk at gdc i mean i feel like this moment kind of really got people taking the issue of especially ios cloning seriously yeah just there was a lot

of content farms that were making like a ton of shitty clones of good games um and you know it's a shame because obviously the original developers should profit from it at least some way and um but there's also the nature of a it's impossible to copyright gameplay mechanics and be so much of game design is iterative based on like what other people have done previously. So there's a gray area to which when is a game cloned versus, hey, we're just building on this idea to make something very different and cool. Yeah, yeah. So we should talk about what the game is because before we go any further, I guess, there's a lot of like other technical stuff of you as a fisherman, and you can cast your fishing line into a bunch of water right below you. And using your phone's accelerometer, you will basically tilt the fishing line left and right, trying to get the line or the hook, I guess, as low as possible in the water before tapping onto a fish. And once it hooks onto a fish, the reel will start going back up. And while it's going up, the idea is to catch other fish that happen to be swimming left and right as you're sort of pulling the reel up.

So it's a game of dodging on the way down and collecting on the way up. Exactly right. And then when the hook actually makes to the surface all of the fish that you've collected below will then get thrown into the air and you'll use basically guns to blow the fish up uh as they're kind of flying through the air and the idea is to blow them up before they splash down in the water. And every fish that you kill will net you some money, and that money can then be used in a store that will get you more weapons or a longer reel

or other aspects that'll basically make you progressively more powerful in the game. Yeah, so as you get deeper into the game, you'll have the ability to go basically down infinitely, just the longest string i guess imaginable um you will get uh effectively a chainsaw lure that will allow you to cut through fish and then uh an amount of gas or fuel to like power that chainsaw and that amount can increase so you can buzz through enemies and that makes it a little bit less stressful as you're zipping down

um there are like shortcuts or i guess earlier start points for certain levels that you can unlock um and there's fashion that you can unlock because you want to be a cool looking fisherman yeah man hats and stuff yeah yeah so that's basically the loop um and i think a lot of the draw is you know it's a lot of it is just like a very, it's like a very soothing vibe-y kind of game. There's like chill music. The art design is like, uh, kind of looks like origami. Like the fish are projected as like very low poly origami paper. And it's just like feels good to play.

It's very satisfying to blow fish out of the air and just kind of very relaxing, which is not always the case with iOS games. Yeah, you're right that origami are paper craft, where when you hit them, they kind of pop almost like confetti. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it is a dream scenario in

terms of mobile controls that actually take advantage of what iphone is um the motion controls in this game are so good they are so good and and it really it's amazing that it works that well because it is all about that precision of moving left to right to dodge. And the idea of that precision of working with motion controls on any device, let alone your phone, it seems like a recipe for disaster. But it's amazing how, like, I feel like I can really thread the needle while, you know, sinking deeper and deeper into the ocean yeah and kind of how much it feels let me be clear it does not feel like literally fishing at all but there's something about that way of holding the controller and then rocking it left and right that feels reminiscent of holding a fishing pole yeah um it's yeah it just feels right and then the the shooting mechanic

just being tapping uh critters feels like popping bubble wrap oh yeah um so i mean it it sensory wise it is really making the most of of its of the the phone i think that there was was there a pc version of it at any point? I don't think so. Other than the Flash game, yeah. But we should mention sort of what has changed in this new release because it's quite robust. I was actually surprised at how much changed. So the original game was fully 2D. So all the art was just 2D.

The fish were 2D sprites effectively. 2d the fish were 2d uh sprites effectively um this installment everything is in 3d but it still maintains that kind of paper craft aesthetic so at a glance you might think it's 2d but actually all of the fish are a very flat kind of low poly 3d when they you can see it when they like spin around or when they're flying through the air you can actually see that they have depth and uh so it kind of gives it a slightly more modern look to it without totally um disregarding the original look of the game i think it works great i think it's it's a big improvement quite honestly yeah did what did you think of the actual kind of mechanic changes i I mean, mechanically...

It's mostly the same. Yeah, but I didn't notice a lot of changes. The one thing I think that jumped out at me was the haptics. So the game has a lot of vibration in it. Basically, everything you do, whether it's catching fish on the way back up or obviously shooting fish out of the air, you'll get the haptics of the tap on the way back up or obviously shooting fish out of the air you'll get like the the haptics of like the tap you know on the on the iphone and done poorly that can feel like really bad and annoying but i think this game does it incredibly well to the point of giving you this

really this sense of like tactile like you can really feel the actions of the game uh i was talking to zach a little bit about this and and the term is juice by the way i think it used to be like game feel but juice is like the the extra stuff that gets added to the game to make the game feel better that isn't necessarily like raw gameplay it's like there's another aspect that would count as juice when you go lower than you've ever gone in a certain map. So let's say you've only gone 250 meters in a certain area and you go past that, there's a line that shows you, Hey, you've never been this deep before. And as you're going through the line, traditionally you might just like pass the line. Oh, great. I beat my record here. You'll like kind of burst through the line. Like the line traditionally you might just like pass the line oh great i beat my record here you'll like kind of burst through the line like the line will stretch around your hook and then burst open

kind of giving you this new sense of satisfaction and enjoyment and it's shit like that that is just like fully packed through this game that makes it like i don't know very satisfying to play very uh rewarding in ways that aren't just as simple as hey i got a new gun yeah and there are little surprises like that throughout there's narrative versions of that too like a little tiktok fake tiktok app yeah um where you're gonna see the stories of other fishers or fisher people yeah um and um there are little stories for each of the fish that you collect in the fishopedia that they have, including last night I discovered a nod to a game from Co-op that I actually, I'm embarrassed to say I'd not heard of before. And it looks really neat. And I was glad that I had been advertised or marketed or Easter egged into finding a new game that actually looks really fun yeah i found a a fish from minute which is one of jw's games which is awesome like there

there's all sorts of little knots like that i know you um have gone pretty deep into the new game plus which is a new feature this wasn't in the original yeah there are two new modes and i feel like i went pretty deep in one and you went into the other yeah i don't think either of these are spoilers for anybody there's there's nothing about honestly i think it it kind of would encourage me to play more like maybe you feel like oh it's only going to be three hours and i want to savor it but there's actually a lot more to this game yes yeah yeah yeah so for new game plus it is the game all over again like i and i when it started and i realized that you um are gonna play the game you you have the option to initiate new game plus i should say first you can keep playing with the old thing and max it out or you have the

option to uh do a little cute story beat i won't spoil and initiate new game plus and i i was immediately like i can't i love this game but wow does it devour my time and then sure enough like an hour later i was playing it again um and i would say that where the first playthrough is about kind of just completing the cycle of buying all the gear and reaching the bottom of the ocean of a certain area and, I guess, completing the story. New Game Plus so far feels much more about filling out the fishopedia. Yeah. And there are tons of, like, rare and variant fish.

And I would say it feels like every other time or so I'm catching something new in New Game Plus. And from what I understand, it seems like there are multiple New Game Pluses. So each time you beat it, you increase the odds of you catching certain rare fish. Yes. So the more New Game Pluses that you trigger, New Game Plus 2 or 3 or 4, the higher your odds of catching things. And I imagine there's some things that you trigger, New Game Plus 2 or 3 or 4, the higher your odds of catching things.

And I imagine there are some things that you probably would only see if you made it to 4 or 5 or whatever. It is... I feel very good with how much I played. I've almost finished the first New Game Plus. I don't know if I will. I probably will.

But I'm curious about the mode that you've been doing because I did not even notice it. It looks awesome. I opened it right before we started recording, and it looks sick, and I'm very energized to play that. Yeah, it's called Pro Fishing Tour, and this is probably the most dramatic departure of any mode within the game that i've seen um it is

effectively ridiculous fishing but a competitive version of that where there are seasons and you basically have to min max your performance on every day of the season to try to get the most points as it were within the season then there's rankings and stuff online if that makes sense um the the biggest changes just off the top of my head are there's ammo now so your gun that you fire in the normal game has infinite ammo and you're basically just tapping and and the only time you ever lose fish would be if you run out if you let them kind of fall back into the ocean but in pro fishing tour there's actually ammo so you kind of have to be smart and selective about when you are firing stuff off and where

you can spend money to upgrade a weapon to increase its clip size for example example, but then that money is not being spent elsewhere. And the amount of money you get is kind of limited because while you can do as many runs as you want every day during the season, whenever you catch a fish, that fish is then replaced by garbage on every future run. So if you did like five runs and you caught a bunch of fish, chances are almost all

the fish that you're going to see on your way down, it's actually going to be garbage. It's worth nothing. So there's this like whole mechanic where you're trying to, again, get the most out of your performance on a given day, um, to kind of slowly but surely build up your arsenal throughout the season to the point where you can score insane numbers on the last day of the season using all this gear you've collected there's also like many challenges like oh you have to find this specific fish type or you have to shoot this specific fish type using this automatic weapon and if you focus on those challenges you'll get more money and then again have more of a shot in this leaderboard. There are also like effects.

So there are climate effects. I'm just looking at like what is today, right? Yeah. And today is opposite day. So the fish swim backwards today. And there's chainsaw up, which is using the chainsaw moves you back up while while on the way down um so i guess you have to like go down and kind of chainsaw up into enemies yeah and then the there are fish effects like magnet so when certain fish are caught they magnify they magnetize nearby fish and attach them

to the hook and there's like an auto gun bonus uh So like that means like that fish is worth more money if you're using an auto gun. Yeah. So there's all sorts of modifiers for how you're playing on a given day. And that pretty dramatically changes how things play out. It's wild. I think that the normal game is probably more my speed because I found myself getting a little bit anxious based on my performance it's also uh if you're if you're just listening to this maybe it's going to be like late july the seasons start kind of uh the first week of every month so if you're coming at the season

late you're going to be at a massive disadvantage for all the people that have been playing and already built up an arsenal over the season so you are kind of encouraged to start at the beginning of the season but it's worth checking it out just to like see how the system works so that if you are interested in like competitive ridiculous fishing you can then start on the very first day of the season and uh have a jump on it it's wild that it's in there because it really is like a total change in the like flow of the game and even though the core mechanics are still the same like it makes you think about the game in a completely different way and i'll be really interested to see how much it kind of

latches on to people because it definitely seems like a oh wow this is a competitive version of this normally chill vibey hangout game yeah that sounds awesome i i'm definitely gonna dive into it uh this week and kind of report back um cool i mean it's a great game if you have apple arcade i strongly recommend you check it out uh i'm i'm curious if this is going to be limited to apple arcade or if like in a few months we'll see it show up on Android or things like that. Yeah, I don't think at the very least, I don't think it'll be a few months because based on what I've seen with Apple Arcade exclusives, they tend to be pretty long, at least a year. But again, I have no visibility into like how long that relationship is. But it is honestly like I have not been this engaged with an iOS game

in quite some time. And so it's nice to have something in my phone. Yeah, I'm just happy to have, like, a real remake in Apple Arcade. I feel like we've seen a few of these Apple Arcade editions that are just the same version of the 4Pay game, but now free and part of Apple Arcade. Yeah.

Which is like fine. That's great too. But especially for these older games, I'm very happy to see something like this. Now they need to bring back Alice. Do you remember Alice? Think of like Drop 7. I remember Drop 7. I remember Drop 7. I don't know what Alice.

Alice was the game where it was circles, and you could touch the circle. You had to hold down circles with your fingers. That does actually, no, I remember it now. Yeah, that's ringing a lot of bells. Yeah, it was so cool. And then lost your time, because that's how ios games

tragically yeah it's very sad uh especially in ios i think it's more a consequence of ios than it is like steam for example where i think games stick around for way longer but i there was a big culling that happened i think when ios games went 32 64-bit, whatever that jump was, where a lot of games just didn't get updated and then just disappeared. And that's really sad because there were a lot of dope iOS games that I'd love to see come back. I just sent you a link on Ellis, and this is very sad, in that it got updated. The news story is Ellis gets updated in 2014 because it was released in 2009

oh my god so like the update was almost 10 years ago uh yeah wow what a bummer um what a cool game yeah uh cool well how about we take a quick break and then we can come back and talk about Remnant? Let's do it. Cool. Okay, everybody. We are back. And we are talking about Remnant 2, the sequel to Remnant of the Ashes. Remnant from the Ashes.

Remnant from the Ashes. Thank you. I think best known as, quote, Dark Souls with guns. Yes. Which I don't think is quite right. But sure, it's as good of a place to start as any. I don't think we talked about the original Remnant that much. I feel like it might have, Griffin might have mentioned it in passing.

It seems like very much a Griffin game. Yes. It feels like a game that also really grew in estimation with fans over the years yeah um remnant 2 is really interesting and i do not think either of us really loved this game um but i think it's worth talking about because it it's a real eye of the beholder game yeah and that's something that we've been kind of like chatting about before recording. And I don't know. Do you want do you want to kind of talk through our experience? Sure.

So so Remnant 2, like the first game, you know, Dark Souls with guns, which I actually think is close enough insofar as, you know, there's checkpoints and you've got a stamina meter and you can roll out of the way of attacks and you have guns. And, you know, that's pretty close to Dark Souls. you've got a stamina meter and you can roll out of the way of attacks and you have guns and you know that's pretty close to dark souls um the game itself is a third person action game it kind of feels like gears of war a little bit but it's also got like the loot hooks of a game like destiny or borderlands where you're you know shoot guys and guns pop out of them, and maybe the gun has more damage or fires better or whatever it is. This was my first experience. I didn't play the original game. So my first experience was playing the sequel,

and my immediate thought was it feels actually great. The gunplay of this game feels better than almost every most it feels better than most third-person action games i would say yeah it's very hard to make a gun feel good in a game uh studios have spent millions and millions and millions of dollars trying to pull that off and remnant does that uh quite well it feels great to like fire the guns in this game and to kill like weird post-apocalyptic monsters and creepy angels and all sorts of other weird stuff that's in this game um neither plant or i were able to get far enough to explore what i think is like the biggest draw of this game as well as the original game which is like basically the build

crafting uh aspects of this where you're unlocking skills and and kind of crafting kind of a handmade character using the loot you find as well as the talents you unlock and i hear that stuff is very good and for people that like love destiny or love Diablo and stuff like that, I think the general estimation is like, although all of those hooks are very well integrated. But because neither plant or I were able to experience a lot of that stuff for a reason we'll get to in a second. It kind of just left us with a third person action game, which in my estimation was fine. It felt good. But the things you were doing and the environments you were visiting were like very simple. There are things we've been doing for the past 15 to 20 years in third-person action games.

Yeah, I mean, it felt honestly like a 360-era third-person action game, like a one of the earlier gears games, like a lot of the environments were like very simple and cookie cutter, which actually makes sense because the environments are actually built using an algorithmic tool to randomly generate a campaign for you. So people, when you're playing through the campaign, if Plant is playing through campaign and I'm playing through campaign separately, we will see different missions and different maps in different kind of combinations to play through the story, which is shocking. Like neither of us actually knew

that that was the case when we started playing. And then I joined Plant's game and I was like, oh, you've been to the place with the angels and it's like a holy church thing and he was like no i've seen like robots and i was like robots so i joined his game and it was like a completely different environment that he went to first which i thought was really interesting but the kind of unifying characteristic of both

environments was is a lot of hallways and a lot of corridors. Shooting things that fly and or walk. Yeah. And I like the interaction being shooting things, whatever that's most games, but the environments themselves being very simple, which I think they have to be because the algorithmic nature of how they're built lends it to like a very like unthrilling series of environments that

you're going through so to for our first experience there's a large tutorial area that is the same yeah when i can understand correct every time and and that's like the the usual like here's how to shoot here's where the story left off which if you have not played the previous games or watched the YouTube explainer, is going to be meaningless to you. Yeah. The world is in a bad way. There's crystals. There's monsters. There's multiverses.

Yeah. And then you, like, touch a giant red rock or a jewel or whatever, and you get zapped into wherever the game wants to start you off um and up until that point i was like fine you know again like very much neutral 360 era um style third person shooter with just really great shooting yeah i'm really great feedback uh and then uh came the headache which was fresh and i starting in a giant desert wasteland uh with just a variety of similar looking places for us to go us finding a place in the wasteland to like dig into effectively going into that cavern um after shooting like the same three enemies over and over and over again, which again, that's a lot of these games,

and getting onto a train. And then proceeded a train mission that felt like a truly like 360 era, where you go in one car and you clear out that car of enemies and you move on to the next one and you clear out a little bit more of the same enemies and you go on to the next one and you clear out a little bit more of the same enemies and you go on to the next one over and over and over again. Except it's hard. There's instant death, or not instant death,

but very easily triggered death where I could not figure out why certain things hurt more than others. And just some weird, weird instant deaths, which you had, Frush, that was, it made a very simple thing quite terrifying. You want to go into that? You mean just that, oh, yeah. Yeah, there were a number of times where I, well, the first time I accidentally just walked out of one of the train doors and fell to my death instantly.

And you can't get revived if you die from falling damage. And I was like, okay, I guess I won't do it. That was my bad. I grant that I probably should be more careful around open train doors with a moving train. But then there's a moment where you have to jump from train car to train car. And it's actually an input that you have to make at the right time. And normally I wouldn't get stressed out because it's like, whatever, I've jumped over a million gaps in Mario. But the thought that like, oh, if I die here, Plant has to go it alone.

He can't revive me. It's going to kind of suck. I wasn't 100% sure what the input was because it was like a running a input it just was very basically you walk to the edge and i think you hit the jump button but that wasn't far enough so you just jumped into the pit yeah and this again this is not going to happen every time i i want to be super clear this is like not like the world's worst game design or anything like that but it is one of those things when you're playing a game where it already feels very old-fashioned and then these things start accumulating where it's like oh it's unforgiving in this way of like i can't fall out of the side of a train

or now it's like unforgiving and just how i navigate the world and it's not clear to me those things stop feeling... And then again, I'm not sure why certain things are causing more damage than others. In a game that seems like it's very dark Souls-y, what I appreciate about Souls games is the rules feel very clear to me. Yeah.

Even when I'm awful at the game and they feel clear to me from the start. That said, I mentioned the Eye of the Beholder thing feel clear to me from the start um that said i mentioned the eye of the beholder thing because a funny thing happened where we we had a review of the game on polygon and the reviewer did not enjoy the game um was new to the series did not like the story and and just did not click with it and then we watched um ign's video review And they gave it like a 9 out of 10. They loved this game. They loved it.

And what was wild was watching this YouTube video and it felt hallucinatory. Not that this person is wrong, but it reminds me of how any art really that you consume and that you love is such a personal experience.

Because this person very clearly believes everything they're saying. And these games have massive, massive amounts of fans. But what he was pointing to or what they were pointing to like exciting to me just looked like being in a corridor shooting things um and i think that's like kind of to your point fresh where you're like you know we didn't get to that later part of the game where you're collecting all the gear and and that you know it really has its hooks in you i think that's what happens with like a really great game when it does click with you is it kind of like creates the fantasy and you are so bought in that something that's like somebody on the outside looking at it i think about this a lot with like

mobas you know like our league of legends something like that right i look at it and i see nothing and then people get in a stadium to watch it yeah you know and and i think like that's kind of what has happened for me here is i i think i trust that like for people who love this game, that it actually is good. And you should really check out a bunch of reviews if this is something you're curious about. But it is it is always jarring when when you just have such a completely different experience than somebody else. And it's cool, but different. Yeah. And speaking back to plant and i's experience

we super duper tried to finish that i've played a lot of video games and i really super tried to finish that train sequence we died probably seven or eight times at that one sequence because even outside of the falling off the train part it eventually gets to a point where you're just in a very tight train car and boss just jumps down with you and you have no ability. I mean, maybe you do, but I could not figure out a way to dodge around his attacks, nor could I burn his health down fast enough to like make it. So I didn't have to dodge.

And if you did judge you ended up falling out of the train yeah so again and again like you you would be sekiro not actually not sekiro but i've beaten all the souls games and elden running and yeah so it's not like i've gotten about halfway on almost all yeah yeah but like we're not incompetent no i don't i just don't know what the game was trying to encourage us to do i don't know if i was under geared i don't know what the game was trying to encourage us to do i don't know if i was under geared i don't know if it was like algorithm based like was this just because of how it creates stages i i never i came away from it with a lot of questions yeah and very little energy to like find out the answers at a certain point. Yeah, it does sort of beg, if this is a game you're interested in, maybe read like a here's what to do first kind of guide.

Because, yeah, we were pretty lost. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, I feel like we don't, especially with this show, bring a lot of games that are like not something we're really into. not something we're really into but i i think both of us still wanted to talk about it anyway one because it was just such a unusual experience um with a game like this and two again to have that sort of experience and then see other people like not just liking it like loving it i think i think that's just always interesting because we don't get that as often as I would like in the video game space. Yeah, I like that disparity. It actually, it's much more interesting to me than,

oh, yeah, no, everyone fucking loves Tears of the Kingdom. Like, of course they do. It's the best fucking game. Yeah. But like, yeah, the dichotomy of like someone approaching something with a completely different perspective and interest levels, that's cool i like that variety yeah i would say if if you are listening to this and you are a fan of remnant one or two and there's something that you really like about the game definitely i mean we have the

newsletter now with besties.fan and whether it's like in the comments or even replying to that email we see those share some thoughts, because I would like to hear more about what people really like about this game, especially from folks who listen to the show. Yeah. And maybe that's something we can talk about on a later episode. Okay, we are wrapping up. I think it is officially time for honorable mentions.

Okay, so I have a very good documentary recommendation for all of us. As some of you might know, Hayao Miyazaki's film, what is it called again? How Do You Live? And then it's called A Boy in the Heron in America. Right. Well, whatever it's going to be called based on your region, it just released this week in Japan to

rave reviews, but unfortunately, if you're in the U.S., you can't watch it yet. It's going to be released here. You can't see a single image from it. Yeah, it's pretty impressive because no trailers were released. They're just assuming, rightly, that people will just rush out to see a new

hayami azaki movie but if you are interested in him as a person and how he makes his films there is a documentary on nhk called 10 years with hayami azaki uh nhk is the I think international arm of Japan's like news outlet and they have an app that has a bunch of like their productions on it and for free you don't need a subscription or anything you can watch this documentary

you kind of have to dig for it a little bit in the app but if you search for 10 years with Hayao Miyazaki it will show up it's a four part documentary I've only seen the first two parts i haven't seen three and four but the first two parts are basically about him making ponyo and uh the release of ponyo but like that whole process of like how he even starts with the idea how he um you know animates a lot and approves all the animations by hand himself it's pretty wild it also kind of goes into his strained relationship with his son who is also an anime director of some acclaim and it's very personal and intimate the only way that he would

agree to do it is if it was a single person on the film crew doing both audio and shooting it so it's really just him and a guy in a room following him around and it's remarkable and i'd really really recommend it if you're a fan of his movies which i certainly am yeah if you're also a fan of people just getting utterly wrecked by their heroes, it's great. Yeah. If you want to watch some people be like, I have something to show you. You've meant so much to me. And him look at it and be like, this is enough animation to the very idea of humanity.

You'll get that. You will get that. What a guy. What a guy. What a guy. I'm not saying he's the best person. Oh, no, no. I'm not even saying he's a bad person. I don't know him.

I'm just saying he is very confident in his artistic vision. And he is not afraid to talk about art with criticism. Yeah. Which I think is like not as common. If you are curious about that movie, there is an English translation of How Do You Live that people can read now. It came out, I think, like maybe two years ago or something.

It's a manga or what is it? So there's a manga, but there's one in Japan that's a manga. That's not translated. But I believe it's like a novella that's like a book book. And it's from, I think the 20s

or the 30s. I think the original version of it. Oh. And yeah, I think Neil Gaiman does the intro. Oh. I also think the book

may have been edited following World War II. I don't know. There's a lot of history behind this book. It was a very big, important children's book in Japan. So yeah, it's worth checking out. I would probably grab one sooner than later because I am looking on Amazon right now. And it looks like there are not a lot of copies.

And that the delivery dates are pretty far away. So go for it. Yeah, I mean, in my recommendation, what do I have? I've been reading a lot of, like, games industry books that are coming out these days. There's a lot of stuff coming out from mit press right now um and uh did you you've played pippin var's games right no i don't think so do you know you don't remember um pippin has done a bunch of games i think we may have even talked about over the years on this show. He did games called like What We Did, Jostle Parent.

There's like a weird Pong variation. Just a lot of experimental games that you can play on his website quite easily. He's also an academic and a games critic and he wrote a new book that is um coming out i think next month and it's called what games are made of i believe that's the full title um and yeah it seems really interesting i just the stuff just got the stuff games are made of thank you yes i just got it. The Stuff Games are made of. Thank you. I just got a copy. And then the other one that is out is The Video Game Industry Does Not Exist by Brendan Kueh.

And both of them, again, I'm very early in both. But it's cool to see some names. I remember from the early days of games blogging when both of us were kind of starting in our careers who are now like really established talents in the games academic space. Writing things that I think are like challenging and fascinating. If you are the type of person who likes the real nitty grittyitty of criticism and the logic behind game design. Let me be clear. It's from MIT Press. It is academic writing. I think both Pippin and Brendan are way more interesting and engaging than most academic writing, but that's still the purpose that it serves. But again, if that's something that you're into, if you are thinking about going

and studying game design in school or you just like doing it as a hobby, I think you should it serves um but again if that's something that you're into if you are thinking about going and studying game design in school or you just like doing it as a hobby i think you should check them out yeah cool i think that's it i think we did it let's talk about what we talked about we talked about ridiculous fishing ex you can play it right now on apple arcade and Remnant 2, which is on Steam and I think consoles? Maybe? No, maybe not. Maybe just... No, it's on consoles. You can play it on PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X or S.

You can definitely play it on Windows. And your recommendation was... Ten Years with Hayao Miyazaki? I think that's what it was called. Yeah, it's on NHK. You can actually watch it online just through a web browser as well. You don't need the app. But yeah, it rules.

Super good. And then mine is The Stuff Games Are Made Of and The Video Game Industry Does Not Exist. There's anotheryazaki documentary right what's the other one yeah there's another one madness i've heard it's not necessarily as engaging as this one not to knock the documentary that i haven't seen but it's a little less intimate is what i've heard about the other sure i mean that would make sense considering you know only one person was allowed in with a camera and sound.

Yeah. That's the definition of intimate. Cool. Well, I hope everybody checks those things out. And that's it. Do you have anything else on your end? Just you should sign up for the newsletter. Oh, yeah.

You should do that. Go to besties.fan. You'll see links to all the things that we discussed and plenty more. And every once in a while, we're just throwing some game code on there. We had Shoulders of Giants on there last week for the Resties newsletter that also dug up the Day of the Diver episode, which we did back in the fall. And now that game is out and people love it. Ahead of the curve. That's what we are.

Some might say we are too good at our jobs. Until next time. I'm Christopher Thomas Plant. I'm Russ Frustick. And this is The Resties. Where the rest of the best. Discuss the best of the rest. Resties. Resties!

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