The Besties - Rise of the Ronin is Assassin's Creed with Killer Combat

Episode Date: March 22, 2024

Team Ninja has been busy!In the past five years, the studio released Dead or Alive 6, Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3, Nioh 2, Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin, and Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty. Their latest game, Rise of the Ronin, compiles everything they learned into their most ambitious project: a sprawling open-world samurai adventure set in a recreation of mid-19th century Japan.Rise of the Ronin takes the “something for everyone” approach, blending the exploration and loot systems of recent Assassin’s Creed games with the quick-reflex sword fighting of the studio’s Nioh series. This video game smoothie is quite delicious — if you can stomach the occasional funky chunk of game mechanics.In the back half, we talk about our favorite under-appreciated open-world games. 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!

So I've been going to the supermarket and getting these like a frozen pizza for when We're like I'm exhausted or my wife is exhausted and we don't want to deal with cooking and the frozen pizzas are like too small For three people although one of the people is my son who's like a little person he little little child Yeah, so it's not quite enough pizza for The us but like pretty close and he's getting plenty So it's not quite enough pizza for us, but like pretty close and he's getting plenty. So we've been sort of managing it. And then I kind of supplement with some cereal.

The other day I went and got like an actual pizza, like a true pizza pie and brought it home. New York style. And New York style, which he had never seen like a full pizza pie before. And it was like a life changing experience for him. Yeah, I bet. Can you imagine if your entire life is like,

you've only seen personal pan pizzas and then someone brings you a fucking like four foot diameter pizza? He must've thought. I can't imagine that. He must've thought. I can't imagine that. He must've thought he shrank. Or do you think that he feels that there are large versions of everything?

That he's been eating baby size. So like right now you're gonna give him the big size marshmallow or like the real size. Oh, the real size like chicken. Do you think I'm feeding my son marshmallows? You got to, man. Babies go crazy for that shit. If you've never seen it, it's actually hysterical.

Yeah, you've never played the bunny game where you just stuff like 30 marshmallows. Chubby bunny, yeah. A very, very small child's mouth. It's not dangerous at all. It's a little bit dangerous. You can't say it's not dangerous at all. Okay, it's a little bit dangerous

and we don't recommend you do it. I think if you poke holes in the marshmallows beforehand, it's fine. I don't think that's how marshmallows work. I don't think that's right, accurate at all. Why isn't this a parenting advice show? That's true. Hey guys. Probably because one of us just said shove as many marshmallows in your kid's mouth,

no pressure, no problem, no choking, no parenting. Hey Griffin, you're just, I'm tired of these internet trolls dredging through our history to find bad parenting advice we give it just to discredit us. Like yeah, if you go back into the several minutes before right now, you're gonna find some stuff. You know what I mean? But I'm living in the now.

Po-po-po-po-po-po buddy's nerve-ect. Hey guys, Gabagool, let's throw this show. What does this say. New tagline. My name is Justin McRae and I know the best game of the week. My name is Griffin McRoy and I know the best game of the week. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant and I know the best video game fighting stance of the week. My name is Russ Frushing and I know the best game of the week. Welcome to the Besties where we talk about the latest, greatest, and home interactive

entertainment. It is a video game club and just by listening, my friend, you have become a member. Welcome to our illustrious ranks. So happy to have you today. We're going to be talking about Rise of the Ronin. And what is that Chris plan? Rise of the Ronin is an open world action RPG of a sort that blends together the work of Neo

from the developer team Ninja, and also a little bit of Assassin's Creed. And I can't wait to talk about it. I really like this game, but I'm very curious what you all think. Yeah, well, we will talk about that and so much more right after this brief commercial interruption.

Before we start talking about the game itself, I wanna talk about the cover, I guess. Oh, wow, we never do this. How do you pronounce the game name? Because there's a line above the O in Ronin, and I don't know what that means. It's an Umlaut, clearly. It's not, an Umlaut is two dots. Oh, fuck, well, I don't know. that means. It's an umlaut, clearly. It's not, an umlaut is two dots.

Oh, fuck, well, I don't know. This is funny, though. I think we can all agree. Yeah, visual gags are how I like to lead out any conversation. Yeah, for sure. Anyway, we can talk about the video game, too. Great, good times.

So Rise of the Ronin, Chris Plant, why don't you, you started to lay it out, but this is an interesting game. Can you sort of spell it out for us? Yeah, so Team Ninja, the developers of this game are best known, well, they're very best known for creating the Dead or Alive series a long time ago, back in like 1996.

And then they moved on to Ninja Gaiden, correct. That's how I did it. And really, they did a Metroid game that is either loved or hated depending on who you are. And more recently- Mostly hated. They've been working on the Nioh game, which are kind of a Souls-like games set in,

which area of Japan is it set in? I don't know, but it plays with like- I really am so stupid. Which era of Japan is it set in? I don't know, but it plays with like- Is Nioh the one with the Englishman samurai? I think so, but like you're fighting yokai, which is like the cool- I'm pretty sure that no era of Japan had actual yokai, so it's fair to say that it's probably a split.

I believe that was early Edo period. I believe that's early 80 period. I believe that's when it was. 1600 is when Nioh is set. Yes, and there is Nioh and Nioh 2 are known also for being just quite difficult. More, even more recently, cause they put out a lot of stuff. They also did a stranger paradise,

final fantasy origin and wo long fallen dynasty. Two games I liked in some ways despite themselves. WoLong especially, I thought it was really interesting. I mentioned all of this because here is a developer who is kind of taking the, most recently taking the FromSoft formula and spinning it out in all sorts of very strange ways. And Rise of the Ruined is a continuation of that because this feels truly like if you took Assassin's Creed Odyssey and you hammered from soft games against it, plus really great

sword combat from previous Team Ninja games like Ninja Gaiden and Nioh all into one package. And I think it's bizarre. I don't know how it came together like this, but it really works for me. It took a while to figure out what exactly this game is for me. Like when I started playing it, it looks like a Nioh. It looks like, what was the other one? What was the other from?

Ghost of Tsushima. No, yeah, sort of. It looks like a Souls-like. It looks like a Souls-like when you put it. Yeah, it looks like a Souls-like, right? So you're looking for unforgiving combat, pitch perfect, getting every input correct, sort of battles where you're like pacing it slowly.

It looks like that. And I was already that. Sekiro even. It was Sekiro. That's the game. Yeah, it looks like Sekiro and like the level of mechanics that's laying on you. It's like, okay, so it's kind of like Sekiro. And I would say that vibe is like all the way through the introduction. And then once you are past like the introductory period of this game, it opens up both in terms of the the world and also just in terms of like what it is like, all of a sudden, it's much easier to approach any situation, how you want to. specifically like around the origins period where you could start out stealth, and if it didn't work out, you can pan, you know, you can switch over to like open combat.

Both are like completely fun and acceptable ways of doing it. Does the Ghost of Tsushima comparison not carry much water with you guys? Because that was the thought I kept having a lot. It's closer, it's closer to that, I guess. Not really. I feel like Ghost of Tsushima is more of a,

more of a stealth game than this to some extent. I mean, you can play it whichever way you wanted to play it. No, that's true. I will say this, at its lowest difficulty, which is, I played it on Dawn because I was struggling in the introductory period, with just sort of like getting through. So I lowered it to its lowest difficulty.

On its lowest difficulty, it is the funniest stealth I've ever seen in my entire life. Like literally, I would blow a man up with a barrel, four feet from his friend, and he's like, gotta finish the soup. And it's like, buddy, I'm right here. You have to do something. I feel bad about this.

The combat is sort of the star of the show for me. Yeah. There's a lot that I like about this game and a lot that I wicked don't and we'll get into all that, but the combat is just like really, really fast and fluid and it feels super great. There's different like weapon styles and then different combat sub styles within those weapons and there's like a ton of skills to unlock. There's different weapon styles and then different combat sub-styles within those weapons

and there's a ton of skills to unlock. There's like 14 weapons and then within those 14 weapons, each of those have three different styles which change how you combo and things. It's wild how much that. There's a series of strengths and weaknesses and then you have stats and certain stats are better at using certain weapon types.

So there's a lot of different ways to play it. And I have not tried a weapon style that didn't feel really, really good. I think the main kind of mechanical like crux of it all is the counter spark, which is just bound to the triangle button. And it is, that is sort sort of your parry button. It can also do a little bit of damage.

And you can do all of the different sort of standard stuff, like you can dodge attacks, you can just straight up block, but it really encourages you to use the counter spark to sort of break your enemy's stance, send them into a panic, so that you can sort of reduce their stamina, making the rest of the fight a little bit easier for you.

Yeah, something about the counter spark I really liked is that all of these games have a countering system, right? Souls has it, Sekiro has it, whatever. What I like about the counter spark is that there's a visual indicator of when you're countering. So if an enemy hits the line that appears when you hit the counter button, that means you're gonna counter.

Whereas a lot of these games, I feel like it's way more like you just have to learn the timing and eventually you'll get it, but you don't know why you're failing necessarily. And I feel it's a very clear indicator. I found it, like, very doable in this game to, like, counter spark every fight that I got into. There's some cool shit where, like, if somebody shoots you with a gun, you can counter spark and it sets your sword on fire. And you could use your fiery sword to set other people on fire, which is really great. What's also good about the counter spark

is if you don't time it well, it still counts as like an attack. So you can still do like a little bit of chip damage and you can weave it into a combo if you mess up your timing. It feels fantastic and I kind of found myself wanting to just be fighting all the time. It's also got a grappling hook that like,

this game has so many mechanics that I would routinely forget about cool shit I could do. Yeah, yeah. Right, like I would get so into doing my counter sparks and learning my moves. Griffin mentioned the stances, but it's got this great system that I wish I've never, I don't think I've seen this exact thing before, where if you have a weapon type or stance that is a bad match for the enemy you're fighting, you'll see that on the HUD. And it'll, you'll see a little down red arrow that's like, Hey, this, the stance you're using

is weak against this. And the button that you press to switch stances will also highlight how each of your stances would perform against the enemy you're facing. So like on the fly mid combo, you can flick to a different combat style that's more effective. And that's actually a distinct move called the violet wind. And if you switch to a different stance mid, it does this like really powerful attack.

So it's wanting you to flip back and forth between combat styles. I would forget frequently that I had a grappling hook that I could use to like zip two guys or pull them to me or eventually throw them. And also use the grappling hook to like get up in in get up in the air, get some distance. I wish the grappling hook was a little more flexible. It's very specific about the instances you can use it, which sometimes I think makes the game feel more ground locked than it actually is.

It's like not hard to get up onto the rooftops, Assassin's Creed style, but it's weirdly like restrictive about where you can and can't start doing that. I do wanna mention the ground lock thing and just broadly speaking, what I found really appealing about this game that I think most Assassin's Creed games do not do is outside, there's the prologue, you mentioned it earlier, then the prologue takes maybe

an hour, maybe, maybe a little less. After you get through the prologue, they give you so many tools and so many fun things that you're not doing the thing that almost all these Assassin's Creed games do, where you're like, well, I gotta follow this guy slowly through the town as I learn about the different characters

and blah, blah, blah, blah. They kind of just launch you into the fun stuff. Within two hours of this game, you have a fucking flying kite, and you can glide around the city and glide around like the landscape wherever you want. Russ, did you try calling your horse while you're gliding? Oh, I didn't. That's amazing.

If you call the horse when you're gliding near the ground, you'll drop out of the glider and land directly onto your horse's back. It's so fucking cool. So cool. Yeah, you can also do assassinations from the glider. So you can glide over enemies and I mean, 30 feet in the air, imagine this samurai comes flying at you in a kite, just drops down and slices your head off. A lot of decapitations in this, by the way, it's great.

Oh, so many. I feel like most of these games really hold back a lot of these things for like 10 or 20 hours before they give you the really fun stuff as a way to build that up. And this game definitely does not do that. And I really love that. Here's how they pulled that off. All the sounds, I think, so far very Sekiro, FromSoft,

maybe intimidating. There is also the Assassin's Creed, current Assassin's Creed, action RPG loot system in here. So really there's two ways to go about playing this game. Here's what I like about that system. If you are not good at the like from software type of game, you can really worry about the loot system in every base that you come across and every enemy that you come across has a level to it. And you can, if you're very, very good, go way above level in terms of like being able to get ahead of the game and have that from soft experience, have a really challenging, you have to nail every Perry experience.

If you are not that type of person and you just stick to the loot, it plays that type of person and you just stick to the loot, it plays honestly like an Assassin's Creed game where you could miss like 50% of maybe more of the parries and stuff. You could just go in and start stabbing at folks and you'll do fine as long as you're at level with people and the game has like kind of a natural level growth for you. I just wanted to say the Sekiro comparison keeps coming up

and as this shows, sort of dedicated Sekiro scholar, I don't actually think the combat feels much like that at all. I think that, and it's not a better or worse thing. Team Ninja's combat is a lot more sort of arcade-y, I feel like, and a lot more sort of arcade-y, I feel like, and a lot more sort of fast-paced and outlandish, frankly. Like the things that you end up doing to other human beings in this game are like completely outrageous.

Whereas Sekiro is much more, I feel like, slower and methodical and like hit box-specific. Like a four- hit combo in Sekiro does not happen very often. Doesn't happen at all. Right. It is, that game fights are usually over and done with within two or three hits.

It's much more Bushido. Does Sekiro have a flamethrower? Sekiro, actually it does, yes. Not quite as, not really as the one in this game. It's fucking fine. The weapons that you get, it takes place in a really interesting historical period where you, and it may be real and it may be imagined, but I will say in this video game,

you are not only collecting a lot of the traditional samurai weapons, and there's more ninja-style weapons, there's also Western weapons, because the Westerners have started to make their presence known in Japan. So you've got like rifles and bayonets and a handgun. So you, you know, you can do that kind of. Yeah, you've got like wild West, like suits and cowboy hats and things like that. Yeah, you can get a really cool.

Yeah, the aesthetics are great. It does have like a transmog system, which I appreciate. I do need to say that this game is a vile offender of one of my least favorite things in games and I talk about this shit all the time and I feel like Assassin's Creed has fallen into this, God of War has fallen into this. It gives you so much fucking loot, so much loot.

Yes, yes. Constantly, constantly, constantly. You are constantly having to go through and prune your shit, and then when it comes time to figure out what loot do I want to equip and use, it comes down to, well, this has an armor rating of 50, and it gives you 6.3, it gives you 2.1 better stealth damage, and it's like, that is fucking nothing.

That means nothing to me. It is not appealing to me at all. I think the problem is everyone you fight, in addition to like chests and things like that, which are around the world, every single person you fight will drop like some fucking sandals or like a shirt. And you have to, like there's a part of your brain

that's like, I gotta check out, see if that's a better shirt. And that's just like a bad experience. At least you're not worrying about like, a wrench and things like that. It's like after every encounter, like I wanna stress that. It's like, it's constant.

And it's constant. It's constant and it's tough because the weapons, the way it works with the, okay, all the gear in this is really messed up. It's like really, it's weird how sort of fundamentally flawed it is. In addition to what Russ just described, you're also getting new gear that's like part of sets.

But usually, if you see that in a game, it's like a high level item that you're going to want to hold onto and cultivate. And you do have the ability to upgrade your gear. But you're getting gear at such a fast rate that you would be wasting resources to try to keep up with it. It is like and it and it's to even try to keep a set going where it's like,

I've got three pieces of this like wise doctor set. And that gives me these bonuses. The the speed at which you are getting gear like you. It doesn't make any sense to do that. Like you can't stay in anything long enough to get a sense of like, especially not freaking 1.5% better key damn, like I will never feel feels it feels like it would have all worked better if there was just an XP system and you just gradually get stronger and you can go and fight. There's a million different ways. And you can occasionally get gear but if the gear you get is

like meaningful and has like a big like 20% more sword damage, whatever the fuck, sure, that's fine. But the fact that you're getting, yeah, it's ridiculous. There needs to be, if you're gonna do it this way, you need to have the ability, and maybe this is buried in the settings, you need to have the ability to auto-dismantle anything that's common or below.

Hey, let me stop you right there, friend. You absolutely, it's in the, it's in the, you can actually, man, you can set it to auto dismantle or auto sell anytime you touch a flag. And you can set whatever rank you want to do underneath. Oh, that's pretty good. Okay, well at least that's there. It does, but it is, it's tough when you want to to, you also though are like, another sort of like fundamental flaw is that you're increasing your experience with weapons the more you use them. But it is not like, I would routinely get a weapon that was literally like 50% more damaging

than the one that I was trying to level up. And it just feels insane. Like I'm not gonna waste my time trying to build the skill level up and it just feels insane. Like I'm not gonna waste my time trying to build the skill level up. If you can ignore it, I just stopped caring about this and did not check my weapons until either the end of a session or the beginning of one. Yeah, I would do it like every 15 minutes or so.

Yeah. But that said, I know there are certain things in games where like I can't turn that part of my brain off. Fortunately for me This is a thing that I could just forget about but if you can the game works relatively well without and and I just to go back like I Love exploring the world and the combat of it So like when I am able to turn off that like digging through menu stuff

Like I was having a really good time it feels like Just this really, in ways that I wasn't able to click with Ghost of Tsushima because the pacing would get thrown off by long cut scenes and dialogue sequences, I never felt that way with this. Everything can be skipped if you want to,

and you can kind of just jump into the action very quickly. And so that kept me going, and I just felt like the power curve kept going in interesting ways. They even got a frigging, you can mark a spot on your map for your horse to auto run to. You could just mark like, hey, I want to go there. And the horse is like, yep, I got it. No problem. Now, so 10% of the time, the horse will run into a tree.

And that horse does not know what the fuck it's doing. So while I was playing cities, that is real scared. Then. So while I was playing this, the game that kept jumping to my mind was the Saints Row reboot. And the reason I say that is because that was a game that all of us more or less enjoyed because it was like a relatively like low impact, easy to jump in, easy to have fun with game that when it came out, got absolutely shredded for a few reasons,

and I worry that this might happen here as well. And one of the reasons is this game doesn't look great and does not run great either. And I want to kind of dig into that a little bit, because even though it doesn't look bad, it, to me, looks like an early-gen PS4 game. And that would be fine, but the game also can't hit 60 frames a second, even if it was on performance mode.

It seems incapable. It feels like it's hovering around 45 or 50 when you're in the open world. And for a game to not look super great and not run super great is just kind of a drag, even though I'm enjoying it, I was kind of taken aback by that. Hmm. Yeah, I played a lot on the Portal, so I didn't notice that as much as a Portal user. No, you didn't. Yeah, when you were streaming in a 700p image, you didn't notice the frame rate.

Yeah, I didn't notice that. The frame rate. It's weird. There's also, if I could just mention, there's so much in this game. I feel like a lot of it feels extraneous, especially when you have things like you have a long house, which is like a base that you return to. And there's a lot of stuff happening in there that I'm, It feels... I don't know what's happening at my house. Like, I roll into my house, and there's like two people that I sort of know, and I can talk to them if I want and give them some books and gifts.

And then you can get a dog that you send out our missions, called a Pilgrim Dog, and the dog goes to everybody else's lands. Oh, there's the online parts, you're like running into people's Pilgrim Dog, and the dog goes to everybody else's lands. Oh, there's the online parts. You're running into people's Pilgrim Dogs. There's a cool thing where if you go into, like, an enemy base, sometimes there will be a captured samurai, which is like a real other player, not controlled by the other player,

but it's like a real model. You can tell because they look crazy. Like, they have some insane pajamas and cowboy hat on. And then they will just go through and level the place cause they're, you know, inevitably higher level than you are. But I had, that stuff seems so like the pace of it was so much slower than the action.

I don't know who they expect to engage with. See, I liked, sometimes you will get into missions, right? And it is a sort of self-contained thing, and that is where you can do the online stuff, which I never got to work on. I wasn't sure if that part of the game was even working when I was playing it. It was pre-released, so.

Okay, yes, and you also have buddies. There's a bonds system in the game. And you can find more of them throughout the game. Right, exactly. And there's some like choices that you make throughout. Like, do you wanna kill this thief that has like been ransacking this village? Or do you wanna spare him and maybe recruit him later on?

And I always liked the missions part of the game better than the rest of it, because I am not like a big open world guy, and this one feels pretty sparse to me. Like the, I was very grateful that there's a system where you can make your horse go from place to place, because then I was basically just sorta getting on my phone and checking my messages and stuff,

as my horse ran me to another fun combat encounter. But the, I don't know, the missions are very like, very well designed, I feel like, and very, it's just combat and stealth and all the good shit just sort of nonstop, which I prefer. Yeah, this to me felt like as close to a crackdown experience for this sort of game as I've seen insofar as just there's so little

Cruft because that you could fast travel everywhere. There's the auto horse There's it just feels like they gave you so many tools to like skip ahead to the fun stuff in this case Yeah before we wrap One other thing there are historical figures in this game. And they are central characters. So the first, this is not a big spoiler, the first hour ends with you fighting Commander Matthew Perry

and dicing him up. Not great. And this is not Friends Matthew Perry, this is a different Matthew Perry? Yeah, thanks for clarifying. This is a real dude, This is a real dude from like the late 50s or whatever. I was, honestly, I was tickled by the decision to just take random historical American military figures and make them into boss battles. I mean, that's for Assassin's Creed has been doing that for years. Oh yeah, thank you.

Also, I mentioned Yeah, sure. Thank you. Also, I mentioned the dicing. The violence in this game I found very cartoonish, so it worked for me. But holy moly, this game is terrible. It's really funny. It is a game that finally says, hey, you're using a sword. Do you know what swords do to bodies?

Yeah. Not good. And then after you cut six heads off, you go and pick up a cat and stroke its little head. Oh yeah, there's a cat collection. That's weird. It's a weird game, man. I feel like this is the kind of game

where in a few years you'll be like, what should I play? I need something fun to play. Get this one out. It's fun. It is fun. If you can get on its wavelength, it's really fun. I would recommend also, if you do bump the difficulty down,

you don't have to worry about the gear stuff. You use the weapons that you like, and then upgrade your gear when you think of it. Yeah, I just like the idea that Team Ninja has been making these games, specifically the NEO games. And very clearly was like, okay, we spent all this time on a character creator, on all these weapon animations, on all these features.

How could we port all this work into a very different style of game? And that's effectively what they've done here. And that's cool. That feels like you're using all the skills at your studio. Hey, speaking of games that you, a few years later, go back and you're like, I just wanna play something really fun

Just let me pop into a open world and have it have a grand time Yeah I think we should go to the B side because we have a whole slew of them to dig into. All right, great Let's do it Plant you were talking to the big game a bunch of talking a big mess about all this fun stuff you want to talk about. Well, it's time to deliver. Well, I just shimmed you.

I want us to talk about underappreciated open world games, which oops, I think this is kind of like you and I right here. This is a lot of our, this is where we butter our bread. And I have what just to kick things off, I'll share one, which is Sleeping Dogs. Yes, Sleeping Dogs. That shouldn't have existed. That shipped in such a remarkably bad state

that I still remember it to this day. I mean, didn't it ship as a true crime game and then they changed the name? No, it was a true crime game and then they changed no It was a true crime game Until it got sold off Activision Blizzard was like we're not gonna do that We're killing that series and then it got turned into sleepy dogs sleepy sleepy dogs is set in

Contemporary Hong Kong and it is a game about you know kicking people's asses basically. You just beat the shit out of people and speaking of sharp objects, no interest in guns here. Lots of interest in various types of knives. You go around from place to place and a very beautiful setting that really showed off PC hardware at the time and still I think looks pretty good. It's open world Hong Kong I think is like quite striking and beautiful. It has a kind of an unusual art style that's like neither cartoonish or realistic. It's somewhere in the middle. And it's a delight. It has a whole bunch of cool DLC where you could take on the personality of Journey to the West, of Monkey and Journey to the West. It's just good. Just good. That's what it is. Just good to be able to do.

I would also add that it came out at a time when open world games were obviously very popular, GTAs of the world, but none of them had good combat. Like think of GTA 3, GTA Vice City combat, not good. And this game had genuinely fun, like third person, like beat them up combat. So that was a nice shift. I mean, I gotta give it up to Infamous 2 specifically. Like Infamous 1, all right. Infamous 2 fucking kicks ass. Was that the Pacific Northwest one?

Yeah, no, that was third, no, that was- No? No, that was second son. Infamous 2 was set in New Orleans, basically. Oh, that's just confusing. And it had like the whole sort of vampire DLC thing that came out on top of it. But yeah, Infamous 1 kicks ass.

It was Sucker Punch's sort of big passion project after the Sly Cooper games. But Infamous 2 gives you different sorts of power sets and the traversal of that game is just incredible. You can shoot yourself up into the sky with electric sparks and then grind on the rail system. And there's just a million different ways to move around that world and it feels so, so, so, so, so good.

I didn't really click with Second Son, I think is what the PS4 one was called, but Infamous 2 has a very special, very special place in my heart. Hoops, you gotta tell people about prototype, the evil doppelganger of Infamous 2. a very special place in my heart. Hoops, you gotta tell people about Prototype, the evil doppelganger of Infamous 2. Yeah, Prototype was the... It was the deep impact to Infamous' Armageddon. I would say it's the venom to Infamous' Spider-Man,

but Prototype was about a... It was like an experiment gone wrong, right? Like somebody who escaped from a lab where they were trying to do this, like, research and what this, this person had developed, these superpowers that you could upgrade with your, that are like all very nasty. It's like all very nasty. Eight times, eight different kinds of knife hands, basically. Yeah. And eventually, definitely, there was a lot of mobility, I remember, in the Prototype series, right?

Like being able to move very quickly through the city. I barely remember Prototype, man. It was good, but it was not particularly memorable for me. The gimmick is you could run up Skyscraper's full sprint. Right, yeah. Which arguably you can do now in Spider-Man games. Yeah, so who cares? Yeah, they came around to it.

This was also, I believe, the team that made the incredible Hulk Ultimate Destruction, which came out way back in 2005 and kind of set the stage for this. They also made Scarface, The World Is Yours, which is a setup to fresh. I assume you're going to tell the world about Scarface to. Well, I'm going to talk about.

No, not Scarface to the Godfather to. I was I was about to mention. Godfather Scarface to the underappreciated sequel to nobody, because the main character of Scarface died at the end. Spoilers. Godfather to you is a bizarre fucking game So there was an original Godfather that EA made and that more or less like followed a lot of the events of the Godfather But about third-person shooting not very good, but it came out. I thought I was good too. It was okay It was okay Godfather 2 went in a completely different direction, where you were basically building up a gang,

and you would have NPCs. We're going to talk about Dragon's Dogma next week. Not far off from Dragon's Dogma, where you're building up this group of NPCs that have different skills, and they'll follow you around and go on missions and protect your back and things like that. And the game was kind of jank as fuck like super jank

but from a Conceptual standpoint it was pretty cool to like be slowly taking over the city with your like pre-made like personally adjusted gang members And they had like a whole other area We would go down to Cuba and and and do things there and it was I was just like really impressed by the like down to Cuba and do things there. And it was, I was just like really impressed by the like, just creativity of the gameplay itself, even if the game itself was kind of busted as hell.

I think the first Godfather game was on, came out, there was like an edition that came out on Wii and I played the shit out of that one because there wasn't another like open world, there wasn't a Grand Theft Auto game for Wii. So I remember putting a lot of time into that and having a lot of fondness for it. Yeah, I don't think I played Godfather 2 though.

Now I'm looking at the document and somebody just wrote Mad Max Fuck You. I like the Mad Max game. I watched the Mad Max. I know a lot of people like that actually. It was, it suffered, it was a weird, it was really weird, because it came out around the time

that people were getting pretty excited for Mad Max due to the extremely popular and well-received Mad Max Fury Road. But this game isn't really like Fury Road very much. Very much. It's very, it feels more like a sequel to the Mel Gibson movies, I guess, like more accurately. It's sort of a standalone thing, but it had like really great vehicular kind of combat.

And the bases were fun because there was always like a bunch of different ways to approach them. And it looked great. I don't know. It was it was a pretty flat experience. Like once you start going into it, like you you kind of get the idea of what it is a few hours in. But I liked what it was. I played all of it. It was good. I liked it. I am just reading also right now that two other Mad Max games were in development, one developed by Cory Barlog, another by Interplay. Both in production, both got canceled.

The Barlog thing is very, very, very messy. He was tied to the Avalanche project. I only mention this because I literally asked about this to the head of Avalanche at the time at E3 once and he told me Barlog was never attached and then I went to a Barlog interview where he was very, very grumpy with me about reporting that he was not attached to a game in which he was and had to play back the audio from the previous interview. It was not my problem. Great, love it. Video game industry. I wish I liked the Mad Max game more

because Just Cause is the same developer. And I almost think- Why do you like that one more, Chris? Because Just Cause. Two. Classic. One other game I just have to say. Well, two things. Earth Defense Force, I've talked about it a trillion times.

Not an open world game. Not an open world game doesn't count. Nope. It is an open world game. And it just fucks a lot of open worlds. Okay. Yeah. You're telling me that when you walk around an open world in that game in those cities,

that you're not in an open world? That's making the argument that a fucking Mega Man game is an open world game. Yeah, you're being contrary. That's like saying Hell Divers is an open world game. What the hell are you talking about? Mega Man happens on a 2D plane and you go from level to level. This is an open city. Is Hell Divers an open world game?

I... Yeah. No! It's not. Stop, stop. You know it's not. Yeah. You know it's not.

Should we shut up? Do we legally have to say something about Far Cry 2? Do we legal, do you legally in this conversation like always have to remember. Oh yeah, Far Cry 2, you can get sick in it. You'll lose your bona fides. Bases, the people come back. The grenades, they'll roll down a hill, no problem. The grass on fire.

The grass on fire, it spreads, the fire spreads. It's incredible, it's not fun, but it's incredible. Crush, are we gonna talk more about this soon? GEOFF We're going to talk specifically about one of these games that I know Plant and I love, and I think others on the podcast might love as well, on a forthcoming episode of the Resties, which is coming up this Tuesday. We're going to be talking about the Saboteur, which is a game by Pandemic, set in World War II, surprisingly wacky in tone

given the setting. But yeah, that game kind of rules and it is now currently available and I think on sale on Steam for like five bucks, it just got re-released and with some very slight tweaking runs fucking great on a Steam Deck and looks fantastic on a Steam Deck. It is definitely of its time, but we have a lot to say about it because it is a very interesting game. This light tweaking runs fucking great on a Steam Deck and looks fantastic on a Steam Deck. It is definitely of its time, but we have a lot to say about it because it is a very interesting game. Hey, you listening to the show right now, here's why you're going to want to listen

to that episode. You play as a professional race car driver from Ireland who goes and fights Nazi scientists who also happen to be professional race car drivers. Amazing. Amazing. It's good. It's good. Good idea for a video game, everybody.

It is. It is. Do we have some reader mail? To kick off reader mail, a bunch of people let me know that my explanation of Freyrin, the anime, is incorrect. I described it too cynically and nihilistic and they wanna make sure that everybody knows that it is actually a very uplifting show.

I will say it starts out dark and then characters change and evolve and they become much happier. So I hate that. I know, I know, I know. I just get one show where everybody's just like, let's kill Nazis. I know. I Nazis. I know.

I know, I know. But however you want to perceive it, I don't mind as long as you watch it, because it's really something special and I think you will love it. It's on Crunchyroll right now. So speaking of things we got completely wrong, this letter comes from JKL.

Griffin is way off base on the Ogre Battle series. Tactics Ogre is the game that came before Final Fantasy Tactics, and they're the same style, grid-based tactical combat with individual characters as units. This is relating to the Unicorn Overlord discussion from last week. Ogre Battle 64 and Ogre Battle March of the Black Queen are both exactly what we're talking about here,

specifically Unicorn Overlord, RTS overruled maps with auto battle clashes to resolve conflicts. The wild thing is that both of these genres were honed under Yasumi Matsuno's directional influence. Not to pin an auteur role on him, but these were the flagship game genres in the strategy game space on consoles for a long stretch there and Incidentally the two worlds created Zenobia and evilists are both rich and subtle

So that's a little history lesson. It's interesting. I didn't know that tactics ogre and ogre battle Different games if I'm not completely honest don't beat yourself up Noted I wasn't there last week, but I knew all of that. So that's part of the reason I didn't really find it. I gotta start fucking skipping more episodes, man. I believe somebody on the show may have mentioned this, but... Well, got a lot of letters.

We also have a note. This comes from S. Payne. I have heard so much about Slay the Spire, and I know that I would love it, but I just haven't gotten around to it yet. What are some games the besties know they would love, but haven't made time to play? I don't have any of these. Yeah, I don't know what that would be for me.

I mean, if I know I would love something, I would probably play it. I can think of a lot. I actually, I have one. And that game is Gloomwood. And this is a game that's been in early access since 2022. And it is basically a kind of indie recreation of the Thief franchise in a lot of ways.

The gameplay is like all immersive gameplay stealth stuff. And it looks incredibly my shit. I am so psyched to play this game. But because it's still in early access, I much rather just wait until the game is actually out out and then I will play it. But that is a game that has always been top of my mind for something. For me, it's the entire history of role-playing games. I did not get into role-playing games

until much later in life, because I mostly had to rent games as a kid. And renting a 40, 50-hour RPG was not sustainable. So now there's a lot of gaps where I'm like, man, I wish I had the time to go back and play through the early Dragon Quest games. What's the top of that list? Well, honestly, it's an MMO, is Final Fantasy XIV.

Yeah, baby. I really wish I had the time to go play that game, but it's so big that I know I will never play it. I feel that way about a lot of, I mean, I guess if the question is like, what would you get into, but you can't allow yourself to get into, like there's a lot of, I mean, I live in a perpetual state of I could get back into WoW.

Like I could, I'll get back into WoW. What it usually takes is one of my friends from college texting me like, let's get back in the wild real quick. I'm like, yeah, that sounds pretty good. Let's get in, let's hop in our, or lately it's been my friend Jason trying to get me to play EverQuest 99, a EverQuest version that is locked

to the original launch of the game. And I bet if I got into that, yeah, I could get pretty deep into one of those MMOs, but I just, I don't have the bandwidth to keep up with it with the pace we have to have for the besties here. A lot of games. Yeah, a lot of games, folks.

A lot of games. Speaking of other things, do we have any honorable mentions? Y'all, I've got a big one. Oh, okay, okay. The other night I went and saw One From the Heart. Do y'all know about this movie? No.

So Francis Ford Coppola, the guy who made The Godfather, we just talked about it, and also made Apocalypse Now. He makes all this money, and then he's like, you know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna fix the film industry. I'm gonna make my own studio. I'm gonna get like a giant soundstage. I'm gonna make a movie for me,

and this is gonna change the way movies are made. We're not going to need these studios anymore. And he says, I'm going to make an American gaudy musical, romantic drama comedy, and it's going to rebuild Las Vegas inside of a soundstage. And this is Jack you're talking about. And this is Jack. No, this is, this is Jack you're talking about and this is Jack No, this is this is one from the heart Some interesting choices about deciding to make a musical set in Las Vegas one building an entire soundstage version of Las Vegas

Have to imagine quite expensive To it's a musical but basically none of the characters sing instead There is just Tom Waits music that is played over moments where musical stuff would happen. Not a musical, I would argue. And there's only one big dance, well I guess maybe two dance numbers. So the idea of it being a musical is a bit strange,

and yet I get it while watching it. This is just my catnip. This is somebody going for broke and making some of the most wild decisions imaginable. He's doing all these like weird 1920s 1930s very early special effects in-camera techniques for like a romantic drama. It's... it is nuts. It also has Harry Dean Stanton in it and Raul Julia, which is a good enough reason to watch any movie Um, I think it is in some theaters right now They're doing a re-release which I would guess means that it will be streaming at home very very very soon I

Wanted to call out the Stardew Valley 1.6 update, which is now live. I haven't actually played it, but I'm pretty pumped about it, and it sounds enormous. There's a whole new farm type that they've added called the Meadowlands farm that has blue grass that's supposed to be good for your pets. So if you wanted to start another 300 hour

run of Stardew Valley, there's never been a better time. Are we going to do like that maybe in May or something? We probably should. That seems good. Yeah. Hmm. We'll think about it. That does seem good. I also wanted to preempt what will be letters, and I'm actually surprised that the people actually studying Japanese didn't correct me. The letter O, the circle with the line over it, is used to write Japanese words in the Latin alphabet. For example, Tokyo and Osaka all have that.

The line is called a macron. Macron, I guess, not like the snack. And it means that the vowel is long. In the case of Japanese, it's pronounced like a longish version of the vowel in English words like go and hope Like a harto. I mean I gotta be honest man. I stopped reading romaji as soon as I learned katakana in hirakana I don't have any use. I don't have any use for it man Well, why would I bother if I want to experience the language? I'd rather read it in its in its true form rather. You only read kanji now? I only read kanji.? I only read kanji.

Can I tell you something, Chris? I have forgotten how to read English. That is how deep I am. I can't read romaji anymore. I have to have someone translate it into katakana for me or hiragana, you know, and then I can read. If you must. If I must.

If I must sully my eye jellies with katakana, as long as it's not the heathen romaji, I am very happy. If I must. If I must sully my eye jellies with katsukama, as long as it's not the heathen romaji, I am very happy. People think that Justin's joking, but he does care around one of those Google apps that lets you translate through photos, and has to take photos of like every sign he sees. Yes.

It actually makes chorus, I should stop? It's a driving experience that is really, really chilling for my family, because I am on a wing in a prayer out there. I watched the first, and Griffin recommended it before, but it's just such a great companion piece to this week's game. I watched the first episode of Shogun. Yeah, baby.

I watched it on Hulu. I think it's an FX series, none of those distinctions matter anymore, but I, it is so, the best, I only watched the first episode and there's a lot, lot, lot, lot, lot going on and there's a lot of things to keep track of like plot wise, but even though I'm not like 100% with the story, it is so lushly produced and like shot and performed. It's just a joy to watch.

Like it's, it feels really immersive. It's a really interesting period of history that I am like very sadly ignorant of, so I'm going to keep watching it. I really, really, really enjoyed it. Um, I'm excited. There's a I really, really, really enjoyed it. I'm excited. There's a moment in the second episode where everything kind of clicked into place for me.

So I'm excited for you to get to that part. I will also say I'm starting to become of mind that Bellatro is going to be the game of the year. Yeah, baby. And I want to, as that thought has started to percolate, I wanted to go ahead and just start warning people about it, because it's gonna be, I've already played two this year that are like Really really good you think I should play it is what you're saying

It's Bellatron and Yakuza yeah, it's sorry like a dragon in the mold Yeah, the fresh you not playing blotcher is bizarre because it is so are you seriously are you fucking with me? No, I'm not because we do a fucking podcast that requires us to play too many games Hey, I know I know okay. You have I understand the confusion. Let me help guys the video game time is for video games You're gonna have to make cuts elsewhere for Bellatro, okay? Like, it cuts into, like, hey kids, can you sort these pennies for dad so I can go get some Bellatro gold, you know what I mean?

Like, who can find the oldest quarter? Like, whatever, it doesn't have to be coins. Good to know. Travis and Griffin keep talking about Bellatro and they are talking about, I've been playing this game so much and they are still talking about things that are exponential levels of understanding of Bellatro.

I have done some truly yucky shit to this. Like I have had a couple runs where I have broken this bad boy right the fuck open and could go on forever and ever and ever, scoring a billion, trillion, scrillion points with every hand. It is so good. The problem is when I listen to people talking

about their Bellatra runs not having played it, it's about as interesting to hearing people talk about their fantasy football scores and how they did last week. One thing I would suggest is play it, and then you can be like me, grip. This, folks, this is what sports is like, you know? It's the exact same thing. You just start playing sports and then you'll love them.

It's like someone describing their dream. It's about that interesting. Okay. I wanna give a quick shout out. I haven't watched all of the episode that is up yet, but yesterday, fucking physical 100 return baby season two. You know I'm about it. You know that I'm gonna watch these big, big, big,

big strong, sometimes they're small, but like fast with like lots of endurance. It's the Korean reality show where a hundred very strong people compete in physical challenges to see who has the best physique and it beats ass. The first season came out last year and it ruled and now it's back. So get on board.

Okay, I think we did it. I wanted to thank the following patrons on the Patreon, which is at patreon.com slash the besties. Marty Day, Mr. Blue Fox, Omjad Das, and Loki. Thank you so much for being patrons on our Patreon. And thank you to everyone else who has backed us or talked about The show or share the show even if you're not backing us on patreon. That's cool, too Just a heads up for patrons. We do have the episode the rest these episode coming on Tuesday where we talked about the saboteur and Some other cool things about triple a games of that era

So stay tuned for that and we also have a bracket episode that's coming up in early April, which was very exciting. We did the very best twists in video games. And don't worry about spoilers because we only talked about games that have been out for 10 years. Lots of fun stuff on the Patreon. If that is a good reason to subscribe. Oh, I forgot one of our backers, Blank Space, also one of our backers, so thank you. Next week, we're gonna talk about Dragon's Dogma 2, believe it or not.

They did it, they finally did it, Dragon's Dogma 2. That'll be next week. Be sure to join us again next week for the besties, because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games? Besties!