The Besties - Sea of Stars Won Over the Most Unlikely Bestie

Episode Date: September 15, 2023

This week's game, the classic JRPG-inspired Sea of Stars, seems like it'd be up the alley of a couple of this podcast's humble hosts, and definitely not up the alley of some others. Well, guess again, buckaroo! Because it's got crossover appeal that we absolutely did not see coming.Also discussed: Karateka, Baldur's Gate 3, Fae Farm, Game Changers: The Video Game Revolution, The Beauty of Games, The Faculty, Who Shat On the Floor at My Wedding 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!

uh on that apple event yesterday they really talked a lot about mobile gaming and guys i know what you're thinking they've talked about mobile gaming in every one of these ever and it's still just angry birds but listen this is the one this is the console this is the well they are they have resident evil 4 resident evil village on a phone which is actually kind of shocking. I did not expect that. I played Resident Evil 4 on my Razer. It was called Resident Evil 4 Razer Edition. I remember that being very scary.

And by Razer, you mean the scooter, right? You're talking about the scooter? No, no, no. It was a flip phone. I would love to see Leon on a little scooter, though, scooting around. Yeah, man. Well, it doesn't have enough pixels to show the scooter, so it looks like he's kind of wakeboarding with his

feet on the ground through the demons and whatever. Yeah, but it's good. I'm playing it right now, actually. Y'all unlocked a forbidden memory for me. Do you remember that I played the entirety of Resident Evil Village on Google Stadia? Whoa. That'sadia. Whoa.

That's weird. Yeah. Why'd you do that? You didn't play the whole thing. You didn't do the whole thing. Yeah, I did. The entire thing. The baby is like in parts. You saw everything on Stadia?

Everything I did was on Google Stadia because I had to play it while I was like staying in California for three weeks. Do you think it's cool that you're the only person that's ever finished a game on Stadia? Cool? Yeah, I mean, that's kind of cool. You're like the only person. Yeah, it's kind of fucking cool. You should start telling more people. It's an accomplishment for sure.

That's like maybe line one or two. No, I think it's more like I saw Oppenheimer. It's one of those things, right? Where you're like, I mean, on one hand, I did it. On the other hand. Oops. Yeah. That's my favorite part of Oppenheimer, where he just goes, whoops.

Whoops-a-daisy. And then they cut to the Benny Hill music over the credits. People said that was a weird choice. I said, no, that's classic Chris. Hey, guys. Nolan. What are you scooting? Jesus Christ. guys what are you scooting my name is Justin McElroy and I know the best game of the week my name is Justin McElroy, and I know the best game of the week.

My name is Griffin McElroy, I know the best game of the week. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant, and I know the best game of the week. My name is Russ Rushton, and I know the best game of the week. Welcome to Besties, where we talk about the latest and greatest in home interactive entertainment. It's the Video Game Club. Just by listening, you, my friend, are now a member. Today, we are bringing a new electronic entertainment for your perusal,

and we call this little number that we made Sea of Stars. Wait, we made it? Wait, what? Well, we kind of consulted, I would say. In that we played it, and now we're going to tell them what we think, and if they want to change it.

You got it, got it. Oh, I see. So that's kind of an informal. This is more of an informal consultation. We're like hit detection or high karate or any of those other like consultation firms. This is like a consultation, sort of. Okay, cool.

Sort of. But what is it? What's Sea of Stars? Sea of Stars is a kind of Super Nintendo style RPG, really in the theme of Chrono Trigger. And it's also a prequel of sorts to The Messenger, which was a 2D NES, SNES-style action game. Ninja game.

How do these two things connect? Who knows? Probably us. Yeah, I don't know. Hey, listen, we're going to talk about that and all these connections and all the things that make this game fascinating, and we're going to do it right after this.

If memory served, when I heard the pitch of this game at the end of this last episode, I might have said nope. You did. I think you said skip-a-rooney or something along those lines. No-per-oony, maybe skip-a-rooney.

I think I meant to think it. Guys, this is why there's egg on my face. I meant to think it, but I think I said it out loud. I've been getting into a lot of trouble with that lately. And now there is egg on my face because this game whips.

Yeah. This is a twist. I'm so glad to hear you say that, Justin. Yeah, Justin, were you a big Chrono Trigger person? Do you like any of these games?

I mean, that was, like, oh yeah, I mean, this was like, like, we played these together, like, Chrono Trigger person? Do you like any of these games? Oh, yeah. I mean, this was like, we played these together. Like, Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana, all these, like, we played together, if memory serves, right? Sure. Like, this was you by yourself, alone. I mean, you could barely think, you know, like you needed a big brother at the tiller.

Whoa, okay. The reading, at the very least. Yeah. brother at the tiller. The reading at the very least. I mean, I wouldn't lump Secret of Mana in with the rest of those just because it wasn't really a JRPG as much as it was a co-op action

RPG. But I think Chrono Trigger is this game's kind of biggest inspiration and that's interesting because Chrono Trigger is such a once-in-a-lifetime like JRPG wonder and that's interesting because chrono trigger is such a once in a lifetime like uh jrpg wonder project uh that i feel like there's lots of people who don't care about final fantasy or

dragon quest or any of the other like sort of big jrpg franchises who know and have strong feelings about me trigger that's me that's r Freshdick that I'm describing, I guess. We should, okay, listen. If you're an old person who knows what that game is, then that's your pitch, okay? Then let's talk to the people who are maybe a little bit younger who maybe don't have the background with this game. What is it?

Yeah, so it's a 2D RPG wherein, I mean, I'm gonna, I guess, talk plot now, but you're like a band of children and you've been raised in a school to make super children because there's a...

There's two. How many children do you think it takes to make up a band, Russ? Or a school. Eventually you'd be born... Or a school. Like, there's two kids, so how many are like... No, no, no. Let's take a pedantic here there are two kids who were born on the the sun and the moon solstice and because of that they have the power to eradicate evil but they also have a friend who's not special but knows how to cook yeah great

cook the just the just we can all i think we all read a lot of justin into garl uh he's kind of pointless they let him be in the fights even though he doesn't do much except throw pot lids at people and uh he cooks meals for people at fire he kind of crushes to be honest like he's he actually slaps he's it's so funny because the plot of the game is you have these two chosen heroes and then their idiot friend garlarl, who comes along, whose very first order of business in the whole game is to immediately get stabbed in the eye by a monster. The game is so lighthearted before that happens,

and then it's like, holy shit. Real big, like, idiot Steven Universe useless vibes coming off this dude. And then you get your first fight with him. He's like, okay, let me see what I can i can do and he just absolutely annihilates like a fucking mummy with a single strike from a pot lid i don't know about you guys he has like 20 more hit points than my solstice warriors yeah like he's like uh he went the batman route without powers he's decided to perfect his dick body yeah um. So I guess that's a...

It's turn-based, though, is something you didn't mention, and I think that that's worth saying, because I feel like even with this style of game, like even with the structurally this style of game, I feel like you've seen a move away from turn-based. I mean, like, even Final Fantasy, this

sort of, like, flagship of the genre has moved away from turn. Yeah, that was that was an interesting and interesting. Yeah. So it's turn based. But this is an important factor. And one of the reasons why this game and games like it appeal to me is because there is an action element to the turn based combat. So specifically when you're in the middle of combat, if you hit the button as you're attacking, you will do extra damage to whatever you're attacking. Or if you hit the button while you're being attacked, you'll defend better. So there's an...

It's a Mario RPG. It's Mario RPG. It's a Mario RPG. Which that's essentially the game that invented that idea, as far as I'm aware. And it makes the combat much more engaging than oh i'm going to use this you know it's weak to acid so i'm going to use an acid power whatever it is but i can i say though that you've touched on what i think is actually the most interesting element about it is that your enemies will uh like queue up attacks like big bad attacks and you'll see like icons a set of icons next to the timer on that attack um and those

icons are tied to like elemental damage so like sun moon you'll see poison pop up later and you need to hit them with the type of damage in those symbols before the timer runs out and you can diffuse that attack you can like cancel that attack. So it really adds this layer of like, almost a little bit of a puzzle things where you're like, okay, I have X number of turns and I need to do this kind of damage. So I need to, it's got another thing.

This is added to that, like a layer on that. If you do a normal attack, which is normally the most boring thing you can do in a video game, in a, in a turn-based game like this, if you do a normal attack, you is normally the most boring thing you can do in a video game in a turn-based game like this, if you do a normal attack you create these sparks

that you or the other characters can suck up to juice up your other attacks so that it adds this whole flow, I think to the combat, where you're trying to decide should I sit on my... Oh, you also recover MP by doing those attacks, so it's like, should I sit on my oh you also recover mp by doing those attacks so it's like should i sit on it should i wait should i hold off until i need

to defuse another attack it really keeps you like active and engaged uh whenever you're fighting i never wanted to run for a fight because i found everyone kind of like engaging and stimulating like that in the little details just feel good. The sucking up those sparks, one, when you knock them out of people, it's a beautiful animation. And then the way that they kind of like zip together and then you can pick one, two, or three usages of sparks to really hammer an enemy with them.

Frushik, do you remember the word that Matty Thorson used to use about like when you make the little details pop it's like a Nintendo word ludonarrative dissonance no I don't I wish I could remember this but it it is this like this focusing on the small details will actually make a game sing um that that's often the thing that gets forgotten because oh the juice you're talking about the juice that, that, uh, I learned that from, uh, Zach Gage actually.

Yeah. I think that, I don't think that was the same word that she used, but I think that is the same thing. Yeah. Every time they introduce a new, uh, mechanic,

it just feels good. It feels good. And it looks good. There's a, you get a grappling hook fairly early, and when you use it, it's not like a zip. You hit it, and it's hard to explain, but when you hit it, there's momentum to your leap.

It pulls you forward, and it just looks cool, and it feels good to do, and everything's like that. What's amazing to me is how many RPGs are in this style where just moving around the world feels bad like feels slow feels stiff feels awkward because i kind of get it it's not necessarily the point like the point is the combat or the point is the story and people kind of give that stuff short shrift but in this game just moving around the world feels smooth like the idea of climbing down a ladder slow boring but here they

smartly have it so you slide down a ladder so you don't have to stare at it the whole time it just feels very snappy and responsive which makes so much difference because you do spend a lot of this game just like wandering around environments looking for chests looking for guys to fight so it should feel good but like a lot of games just kind of skip it they also do something smart with like level design where it's almost a little bit like a um like how you would build a platformer where if you have a path somewhere there's a point like there is something over there like the levels are fairly uh levels is like a weird but the areas are fairly like condensed right like you just have like when

you go to a town there's not a hundred boring houses for you to go walk around and and are empty and there's one person like i hope my husband's home from his job at the soup factory soon whatever there's like if there's a place to go in there's probably a reason for you to go in it there's something for you to do there there's like all kinds of hidden uh treasures throughout there's like little uh you have a wind power that you can use in the overworld to like push things around um yeah there's a little golden sun stuff happening too like puzzle puzzles in the environments what did you think about the story griff you said that was kind of a little bit slow to start yeah i was about to go go there i um't, from what I understand, there is a point in the story, and I have not reached it, where things are sort of recontextualized in a way that makes all the pieces snap together. And I have not hit that point.

And I am waiting to hit that point because so far the story is doing nothing for me like it is uh it it is just sort of super uh overwritten kind of uh characters who i don't really care about uh except for garl garl is the best yeah garl's great but like this like we're the two zenith heroes of destiny of the of the eclipse and we have to go here and stop the fleshmancers spawn from like all that shit is as soon as i saw the word fleshmancer which is in one of the first lines of dialogue in the game i was like yeah oh if you get turned off by the word fleshmancer, your heart has gone hard, Griffin. That's a cool thing to call a bad guy. You're wrong about that.

It is challenging, though, because Griffin is super into Xenoblade Chronicles 3 Excelsior Edition, so it's difficult for me to... What you have just said could not be further from the truth. I've never really vibed with the Xenoblade title. But I do think of the group, you have more tolerance for this stuff. Of the three of us,

I've played so many fucking JRPGs, right? It is, Final Fantasy is kind of its own thing because those worlds are very vast and unique every time. Dragon Quest is basically just kitsch from start to finish at this point and that is very charming and enjoyable to me i don't find much to be charming or

particularly like uh unique about the about the world and characters and the the story here but again like i i am giving this the caveat of saying like from what i understand there is a twist to this game yeah that makes that makes a lot of the plot work and i don't know if any of you have hit anything like that but that before we get to the twist part just one more thing on on this beginning i do agree that it is it's quite slow to to kind of get itself going. I'd say the first three hours is not a grind because it's still quite cute. The visuals are nice. And it's fun to play.

It's fun to play, yeah. It's not a drag. It was my impression of it because I've played a lot of RPGs that start with, and I've talked about it before, the very special boy on his very special day climbing up the mountain to solve the thing because it's his special day.

And you do that for the first like three hours of this game yes but i i think i think it is targeting a younger audience who might not be familiar with a lot of this stuff but that doesn't excuse like adults can't enjoy it um it doesn't it doesn't i i mean i think like a lot of ya books use tropes in a way that like adult books wouldn't because they're less familiar or they're more comfortable or easier to process. They're like easier entry points. I'm not like all out defending it. I just I think it is going for a very different thing in terms of its complexity and depth than Baldur's Gate or even Starfield. Oh, sure. I really like I really liked it like i really

like the the writing i really like the first of all it doesn't get in the way with a lot of it like you are not watching these like 15 minute long cut scenes where people are having long conversations about like government i hate i i you know if you're gonna do a story that's kind of like this i'd rather it be bare bones. So I don't have to overthink it. I'm really enjoying the game part. And but there are like some moments of real insight. There's a great little bit when they're the two solstice warriors are talking about the dumb like heroic shit they used to say when they were 10.

the dumb uh like heroic shit they used to say when they were 10 like coming up with like their oaths and their vows and like hard-ass they were gonna say when they're full solstice warriors um there's a pirate in the game that has a uh meta awareness of the fact that she is in a video game uh who talks about like a guy she knew that saved all of his magic power for bosses, and he'd end up getting his ass kicked by all these regular guys, and everybody would be begging him to use his magic, but he said he was saving it for the boss. Stuff like that. There's some fun little cute meta stuff in there.

I don't know. I thought the simplicity of it was kind of nice, because it wasn't asking you to. I thought Final Fantasy handled it in a really smart way but man alive when people start throwing like 30 different factions and governments and different types of i'd rather have a simple story that is not like getting in the way of stuff and i have for whatever it's worth i have sort of played past i don't know you'd think of it as like a first act perhaps of the game and have seen some of it recontextualized. But yeah, I really – I liked it.

It did not bother me. Now, I didn't seek out more conversations than I needed to have. But the ones that I was sort of like forced into, for lack of a better word, didn't hit bad with me. Did any of you notice connections between this and the messenger? I don't remember the story. It's been so long since I've played the messenger that I don't remember. I remember there were ninjas and it jumped from 8-bit to 16-bit. But literally from a narrative standpoint, I couldn't tell you a single thing that happened in that game.

A single thing. Yeah, I had to look it up. And as far as I can tell, there are some bosses that somewhat overlap. And other than that, it gets into really small things like you can see time crystals in this state of being in both games. Which I think is actually kind of nice that it's not a direct sequel you know what kind of reminds me of is is death's door which if you remember death's door had a weird connection to a game they previously had called titan souls this was the same developer so it's kind of cool to like see people creating these universes that are separate enough that you really do

not need to know the previous game to make that connection. But for people that really loved it and obsessed over it, you have this bonus element to it at play. I think that's really smart. Yeah, I agree. It reminds me of... Did y'all ever read Cloud Atlas?

No. I watched the movie. It kind of counts the the the writer of cloud atlas david mitchell all of his books do a lot of things like that he also wrote that new matrix so you know maybe that type so i mean so does the work of brandon sanderson if we're gonna if we're all having fun here do it i mean i think it's cool to see uh or what's the other one i've been reading lately um the grishaverse, you're all familiar. This is a YA series. There's like Shadow and Bone and Six of Crows.

I've heard of them, yeah. Those, they're like independent series that are sort of within the same, I mean, hell, Brandon Sanderson invented the Cosmere, which is a meta universe in which all universes of all his work take place. It's pretty great. I don't know.

I just, can I say also, I give games a hard time for like a retro inspired look a lot of the time just because I feel like a lot of times it can feel a little bit lazy just because, you know, or, you know, financially motivated, right? Because you got to draw a lot less, which I get.

But this is like so beautifully animated and there's a lot of bespoke animations in this which i really stood out to me like i i think you're right in some circumstances where people take a shortcut where it's like oh they're attacking but really they're just shaking left and right and here uh really just very specific elements of like whatever girl cooking or something like that are animated to the point where it will probably never be used again in the game or at least very lightly used in the game and the fact that they're taking the time to like actually do that pixel work uh really shows how much care they had for it yep the way they handle um consumables is great. You go around the world,

you're always sort of harvesting ingredients for cooking. And then whenever you're at like a campfire, which is like the save point and rest stop for your adventure, you can cook up recipes and you can only have 10 meals in your inventory at a time. And so you can't like overdo it you can't like fill your

your backpack up with shit like you have to be pretty wise about what you cook and what you have in store and then like you feel compelled to use that stuff uh because you know it doesn't make sense to just have a full backpack of food uh that you're not using yeah especially when you got some food that's not as great. Right, exactly. You could make something with like better stuff so you might as well like use it because you're going to get more items as you go through. Yeah, it's super duper small. And the consumables

actually tie into the combat in a really interesting way where you'll be in a moment where it's like, oh shit, I need to do a blunt attack on this enemy otherwise he's going to attack me but I don't have enough whatever MP for this one character to do a blunt attack on this enemy otherwise he's going to attack me but i don't have enough whatever mp for this one character to do this blunt attack so i have to use an item before that turn comes up so like everything feels very integrated um in in a really really smart way that i wish more rpgs gave that much thought into individual turns. And I feel like it's, this game really does an amazing job at that.

Yeah, it's great. It's great. Great. You should play it. We did it. We're going to take a break and we're going to talk about more great gaming content. Some of your emails take a trip back in history.

It's going to be great. Don't miss it. Everybody will make fun of you. trip back in history. It's going to be great. Don't miss it. Everybody will make fun of you. I had never heard of Karateka.

What? I had never heard of it. How is that possible? I had never heard of Karateka. I've heard of Prince of Persia. I've heard of, what's the other Jordan Mechner one on the train? Last something. Oh, yeah.

The one that's like rotoscoped and almost like fmv choo-choo boys adventure and it's not actually that i don't think it's choo-choo the last express um that's a fantastic game uh but i had never heard of karaka yeah i remember seeing it on someone's like ancient computer when i was a little kid and then haven't seen it since essentially. But I knew it was impactful, but I never played it or anything like that. But I did know that it had this moment of impact for the games industry. And and I guess now everyone kind of gets to experience it in a really cool way. Who has like check this out?

The making of Karateka is what we're talking about here. I have downloaded it and I wanted to hear what you thought. So I was somebody who like has no, like I said, no sort of familiarity with this. And this though is the perfect package if you have no familiarity with this because it is a digital eclipse uh product they have uh been making a lot of these like uh historically minded releases i think you could you could say um atari 50 if you didn't check that out was a sort of like museum collection piece where they had like interviews and some uh like promotional images and a lot of like context for the games um and this is that on it focused on one game so karateka was like um one of the first

entries uh or one of the first games from jordan mechner who is the creator of prince of persia um and last express as we've discussed. And in addition, like. Do you want to explain what the actual game is? Yeah, it's like a side-scrolling, very deliberate karate game, almost like Bushido Blade-esque in the way it approaches it. A lot of countering with the right attacks or whatever. Really smoothly animated because it's like rotoscope. Especially for the time. For the time period, it's very smoothly animated because it's it's like roto so for the time uh for the time period it's

very smoothly animated because it's all rotoscope meaning it was filmed with real people and then he animated the frames over it um and there's a a more cinematic story than you would be used to in a game of this time period right like you've got more like cutaways and and stuff like that that build the drama in ways that like a lot of games in this time period, right? Like you've got more like cutaways and stuff like that, that build the drama in ways that like a lot of games in this time period, we're not doing what makes it so cool as a package is in addition to the actual like game, the original game, there's other versions of the game. There's a remade version of it that like looks a lot more modern. There's some betas of it, so you can play it in early stages. But more than that, you see the diary entries that Jordan Mechner wrote about the idea for the game or when he was working on it.

the video of his karate teacher doing the moves that he filmed uh in in uh in preparation for the game you see video of when they realized they didn't film the karate teacher running there's video of jordan mechner's dad who also did all the music for the game um you see video of jordan mechner's dad running in his mom's karate gi through the forest so he had frames to animate like the the running animations for the game and there's all these conversations of him and his like modern conversations between him and his dad about like what the time period was like for him or like how he was uh how the game was made, how they worked on it together. You even, they even do stuff like with the rotoscoping, which is a big thing for Jordan Mechner games in this, like early on like this,

where you're filming and then animating over it. There's like individual museum pieces that you can look through as you sort of interact with this. And you can move a slider back and forth that shows you the original video clip and then shows you the sketches of frames of animation over it. So you can see how it was animated in. I mean anything that you could – like all the video all the promotional stuff letters of like rejection that he got about other games like building up to this game and it's all kind of game like the the whole experience is a kind of gamified like it marks when you check something out and like when you

complete looking through something um and i just like from a historical perspective it's invaluable as somebody who like thinks a lot about like preservation and preserving these experiences and how many games are lost media at this point. It's so cool to see a game like this that really is like I'm going to give myself a pass. I should have known about Karateka, but it is not like a big part of the conversation. is not like a big part of the conversation. You know, a lot of classics from this area have already been mined for their nostalgia and brought into the modern era with inferior remakes. And this is not one of those.

This is a really fascinating, just a fascinating thing. It's well worth checking out if you have it. It does sort of stress me out, the idea that A, he kept all this stuff, or whoever held onto all this stuff. Like there's so many classic games that I would imagine a lot of the raw materials

that are used in this are just lost forever, like totally gone. That's probably the vast majority of games that are ever made don't have journal entries and whatever, beta beta copies of beta earlier versions stuff like that um yeah it's really cool to see yeah what digital eclipse has done with these releases has been really impressive um but yeah it kind of does stress me out i'd also like to see this is being being picky but like karateka came out before i was really like a sentient game player so even though

i remember seeing it i wasn't really like plugged in you know i'm i'll be curious to see if this continues on to you know later eras where we're talking about like early to mid 90s when i was much more plugged in and what that means for those sorts of, you know, preservation efforts. I feel like this is like a proof of concept for that. I mean, kind of obviously. But it must have been so difficult to find anything other than a Jordan Mechner project because Jordan has been so good at archiving and preserving his own work. There's books that he's produced both on Prince of Persia and Karataka.

So they had a lot that they could dig up and actually make this with where I have to imagine most games don't have these sorts of materials, especially video, right? Like that's kind of what makes Karataka unique for that time is there's something to actually look at versus lines of code, right?

They're also investing a lot of – I mean they're investing in this in terms of like – you also have a lot of interviews with like new interviews with people who were influenced by it or inspired by it, which is really cool. people like Chris Kohler Kirk Hamilton does like a 15 minute long sort of mini version of his Strong Songs podcast about the theme of Karateka, it's just an audio file but it's like he goes through the song that his dad wrote and explains

why it hits so hard and why the music is so good and stuff you wouldn't notice otherwise it's it's like it's fascinating man it's like such a cool um such a cool product and i'm so glad that stuff like this is is being made that's awesome great video games you know it's just nice sometimes video games should we dig into reader mail yeah let's do it. I got a few here looking in the mailbag. I see one from Nicholas. Do y'all ever get that I want to play a game,

but I don't know what sort of feeling? Like you're opening a fridge to eat something, but the fridge is full of video games. Do you have any go-to in a situation like this? It certainly happens on Steam, right? Like everyone talks about their steam backlog and it can be extremely overwhelming to see that giant list i think we're in a slightly different situation because we know that there's almost always like an assigned quote assigned game

that we need to be playing but there are moments certainly you know in slower periods of the year when i run into this and i don't know it's either I'll go back and like finish a game that I was very close to beating but didn't or I'll just go to an old favorite like a Binding of Isaac or something like that that'll just like fill that time but what about you guys I I uh I tend to this I'm not gonna be I'm not trying to be all whatever but um I tend to do something that's not play a game if I'm in that position. If I find myself not specifically wanting to play something specific, then I'll try to push myself towards a hobby that I'm not as naturally inclined to what i'm saying is when there is a game that i'm absorbed by it is like full-on and those pop up frequently enough and sort of like consume all my free time that if i find myself

with some without an immediate game demanding it i'll probably try to like watch a movie or read a book or something like that because i know that something will come along that will like fully absorb all my time but yeah um i yeah i have a few like slay the spire is one of these for me uh into the breach is one that i come back to a lot um i i mean we mentioned it earlier but like you know all the final fantasy games are out on ios so you know you know what actually ios is a good example of this where I do run into this feeling on iOS where I'll be out and about and like, I wish I was playing something on my phone, right? Like I wish there was something that I was like really into on my phone right now.

Cause that has been a lot harder to come by. Yeah. I, I agree with you, Justin, about the default to other things. If you're not being grabbed by a certain video game but i definitely have this feeling whenever i travel like if i have like a six or seven hour flight and then you're on the plane and you open up the steam deck and you're like well i i haven't really started anything what do i do and that that's going spelunky or ftl i feel like those sorts of games that i i know i can just have a couple runs in. And then by the time I do that, usually I have settled in my brain on what I actually want to play for the rest of the trip. I love those games where you've played them so much that there is no barrier to like, there's no like relearning it. Like Slay the Spire is like that for me, right? I can pick up

and play Slay the Spire whenever. I played it so much that it's just like in there uh vampire survivors is another one like that where there's no it doesn't matter how long it's been like i just pop right back in there's there's there's very little learning curve there yeah i got another question here from spencer we're back on that book talk a really good model for integrating lots of reviews into an overall picture of how some media is being received is the book review website bookmarks.reviews. And to be clear, I think this question is in relation to, we had that conversation about reviews in general last week. That was sort of the impetus for this question that came in.

Yeah. Book reviews are not scored, so the website just classifies each review as either rave, positive, mixed, or pan. And you can quickly see the distribution of each and read a few of each type if you're inclined i would love to see something similar for games rotten tomatoes and metacritic are to me a little silly giving a hand uh kind of false super precision to the question is this supposed to be any good or what um i'm curious this is the polygon system right kind of like it's more of a recommendation or not.

Like it doesn't have as many degrees, I guess, as this, but that's the direction you all have been heading in, right? Yeah, definitely. And I have like mixed feelings about this because I use bookmarks to like find books. This is the first time I've seen this website, by the way. This is great. It's great. This is great. It still creates a little bit of the problem, especially if you don't read read a ton where you just end up finding yourself looking for raves yeah um where

it's like well i don't you know i maybe i'm gonna get a book in this month i better make it worth my while i should probably read something that's all rave um and that is an issue but the fix that i found which is really the fixed i think review things, is just find some critics. And what I found really helpful about this site at a certain point was, oh, I could find a few different outlets or critics I would have just never found if not for this site, and then I can start following them. So it was kind of like a launchpad to finding critics rather than a launchpad to like finding more books to read because they're there after I don't know, maybe a year or two of using it of actually just taking it for Hey, this is a rave. I ran into the problem that I'm sure a lot of people run into with us, which is what is a rave in book world is awfully not enjoyable. Um, for like a lot of normal traditional people who are not just there to read like the headiest.

Challenging or soul shake. Yes, yes. It's like it's 800 pages of misery. Could you believe it? Yeah. Levels your fucking ass. Rave. Rave.

Levels your fucking ass. Yeah. Rave. Rave. So, yeah, I kind of quickly found that something more in the middle was often what I was looking for with my dullard brain. But, yeah, I think it's still an infinitely better system than the Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes models. I think we have one more question. Yes, this one is from Mike. Based on other reviews reviews because i haven't

finished it it sounds like starfield really shines when you get through the main quest line i know y'all aren't excited about media that takes time to marinate but i'd love to see if the meh reviews turn into an ah review when someone on the best needs to finish the story i i would offer a a pushback here yeah as someone who loved Nier and 13 Sentinels. I was going to say, have you fucking met us? I think we are more than willing to put in the time with a shitty game until it gets good. Yeah, I think it's more that if we just really do not enjoy the game, we will not force ourselves to go through it and i think for what it's worth justin i would also specifically call yeah i would also say uh dr fresh dick and i would

like to offer our counter analysis to this point and that it's still uh pretty bad pretty much really bad so i we both justin and i beat the main story because that's what we kept hearing was that it was like yeah we, we went back where I, cause I, I told Russ, we had a very similar conversation that was, and for me it was, this is one of my favorite video game developers.

If I'm going to say that this is like, if I'm going to file this away in my head as like, this is one of these that I really do not enjoy, then I should at least like then then i would like to be able to say yes i completed the whole thing and it is just not it's not good and that is a hundred percent the case yeah it gets a little more interesting at the end there's like if you're already kind of enjoying it i'd say there's stuff that like it doesn't get like it gets kind of uh noticeably different i would say like hugely different um but there's some good stuff towards the end i would say like story-wise there's at

least interesting yeah but it it no it does not the the things that are bad in that game are are are still not enjoyable for me i do want to say thank you, though, to Mike. I think that's a good question. And I think the point of how it can seem like we don't let games marinate, to use that language, which I think is pretty spot on, it can feel like that because we play through so many games on this show that, yes, we often don't talk about them

after we talk about them that week. But a lot of us are still playing them, I guess, kind of quietly behind the scenes. Or, yeah, or we've just moved on because it just isn't for us. And at this point, I think we've developed a fine enough sense of when something is or isn't for us. Yeah, for sure. It's very rare that something like in the last third or whatever really like chain recontextualizes the stuff i mean that for me it's just a question of time right like i know this is a bit mechanical but it's also our most valuable resource yeah if it takes longer for me

to start enjoying a game than it does to watch the entire first season of a television show or to watch all the hunger games movies or whatever then it's you know that's not how i want to spend my time i need i need a little bit more return on that investment do you guys can you guys think off the top of your head of a game that fits in this category a game that like totally changed our attitude because we had played for you after a significant like for me the one i come back to is like the first game i can remember being part of this this argument this conversation was uh final fantasy 13 which is like such a slow terrible start for the first like 15 hours and then it gets it finally kind of gets interesting after that i know people have said that about or uh assassin's creed origins i think plant said that about assassin's creed origins

is that right plant uh yeah well i i actually like the beginning of that but yeah assassin's creed origins starts on a very small island and then it becomes this colossal game but you have to get through that island i mean the this isn't that slow of a start and i don't know if it's the best example but i do think wind waker jumps to my mind is like something that even though i love the art style it's very railroad-y early on and then yeah once it opens up i was really way more into it but yeah it's very rare because the loop and that's really i think the biggest sticking point for starfield for us is like that like 30 one-minute loop that you're doing constantly is not very engaging to me.

And that's what the game has to keep falling back on because that's what you're doing constantly. So, yeah, it's really hard to overcome that. I would say, like, conceptually, I think the end and the, like, New Game Plus stuff, as Justin saidin said is interesting but not interesting enough to save the whole experience for me also for whatever it's worth i ended up spending about it took me about 22 hours and i and i did one of the like faction quest lines the the uh like sheriff you know the know, the, what do you call it, free start for rangers or whatever. I did one of those and a bunch of other side stuff, a lot of side stuff. But, yeah, and I know people have done three times as long as that in their playthroughs

and copy with them. You know, I hope it's good. It works for them. I hope you're not on your deathbed like, god damn, I really put a lot of Starfield, huh? Oh, well. Hey, I got gotta fact check myself. I was talking about Assassin's Creed Odyssey. Assassin's Creed Origins also has a very slow start

that is in a standalone place. But I just want to let everyone know I know. Just use numbers, you know? They're fine. Bob Fancy's fine. They made 16 of us. five i mean 16 like an honest statement here and this applies to sea of stars as well it kind of boggles my mind

that more games have not learned the final fantasy 7 lesson of start with some bomb ass shit like there have been start with bomb ass shit every time please like please like it you can you can tutorialize like everything in your game with like fucking explosions and dope shit happening.

It doesn't need to be you're going through a school or you're shooting rocks in a cave. It really doesn't. So just keep that in mind. If you're making a game, start with bomb-ass shit, and people will be more excited. The James Bond model. Always have an action sequence before the credits. Yeah, the fucking game level in james bond is awesome it rules last was too a game that i didn't really enjoy i do enjoy the small town opening more in hindsight

for that like i i think that works but maybe that's just because it's like astonishing that they built damn town and well you also have like the whole riding the horse and you're chasing uh your friend and it's snowy and then there's some zombie show like stuff happens in that intro it's not like a glacial intro i'm like like we all love the zelda games but let's not pretend that the first five hours of most of those isn't just watching that stupid little elf run around his hometown with a stick you know no you're right oh i don't don't know if we're very slow. Link to the Past is not slow. It starts with a bang.

Well, it's a sexual scene in nature. You're right. He does make love at the beginning of that game. That's true to us. That's a very powerful moment.

Very, very tasteful, though, that bang. Do we have some honorable mentions? Y'all want to keep hearing me talk about Baldur's Gate 3? Probably not.

But it's still fucking great. Have y'all made it to Act 3 talk about Baldur's Gate 3? Probably not but it's still fucking great have y'all made it to Act 3 yet? I just started Act 3 are you up in there Juice? oh yeah you should tell me what I never do this I'm really

I know the rules of the game I'm not going to get lost on how to play that game I know 5e I'm not going to get lost on how to play that game i know 5e right like i'm not going to get that like confused about it so i really am taking it a little bit slow and like trying to enjoy as much of it as i can like really trying not to to rush through point you should tell me what uh tell the people what you told me yesterday no i'm shamey that's what you want to do it's just funny fresh it was like, you really need to play through Act 2 because Act 3 is going to be so cool. And you see it in Act 2.

It's just so interesting. And I was like, no worries, dude. Like, I'm like 25, 30 hours into this game. I'm like halfway through Act 2. And he's like, oh, yeah? What do you think? I'm like, oh, you know, I'm stuck in those mines. Oh, pal.

Yeah, that's. So you're not in act two. You're just. No, I've just done everything there is to do in act one. You're going to be so powerful. I know. I'm incredible. I I'm doing great.

Not much is a problem. I picked up every loose bit of detritus on the ground. I tried to skip Aunt Ethel, but then in the mines, I found some mushrooms or whatever, and I was like, hey, what's up? I wonder if I can sniff those.

And then it teleported me to Aunt Ethel, so I didn't happen to fight Aunt Ethel. Yeah, she'll get you. You know? Aunt Ethel, the nastiest character in games i obliterated her if i i don't know like if it's supposed to be a hard fight but she got just wrecked i had a really tough time with that fight but i i also fought her much much much earlier than you did yeah that sounds like you did like how the game is supposed to be played not that you become superman and then

you go punch a hole through her throat yeah but that plant you've also collected everything of value on the entire landscape you're the dawn singer with his bag of incredible gems oh i have a gem for this hold on let me dig around in here oh yeah this is an ethyl killing gem hold on let me toss it at you i wanted to call out a book that i've been enjoying okay if you this show's getting brainy i gotta no no no but it's about video games it's fine it's about video games the book is called game changers the video game revolution it's essentially a giant coffee table book like giant like it's 20 pounds this book it's got 300 pages gorgeous gorgeous art of like amazing games throughout history. Great essays.

It's actually opens with an essay from Simon Parkin and India block. And it's just like, if you're looking for like an excellent gorgeous coffee table book that has like amazing games throughout history and like really great art it actually comes out this week. So it should be out when this episode is live. and games throughout history and really great art. It actually comes out this week, so it should be out when this episode is live, and I definitely recommend it.

I also wanted to say I played more Fey Farm, which is out fully now. Did any of you guys dip into that one? I haven't played it yet. I keep seeing people talk about it. It's just to sort of... I don't know that i have much more to say than what i said when you know the preview embargo was up it is very sort of mechanically solid with a lot of really great sort of quality of life improvements on this on the farming genre i guess my more specific

question would be uh yeah where does it what does it do better than Stardew? What is a smoother process in Fey Farm or a cooler process in Fey Farm? I would say it is more enjoyable to kind of just get around the world. The movement is very fluid. You can jump and hop around all over the damn place, and you get fast travel much easier. There's certain stuff like you have basically like your tool auto-selects based on the context of what it is you're doing.

So if you run up to a tree, your axe is out and ready to go. If you go to a plant that needs watering, your watering can is out and ready to go. You're not having to micromanage your inventory quite as much. Honestly, it just does a lot of the shit that Stardew does, right?

It is that genre to a T, but with the one sort of main deficiency being that the characters are paper thin and just sort of these drones that repeat the same lines of dialogue over and over with no personality or anything to them which is always like not the part of stardew that i focused on like i never was focused on you know building long-lasting friendships and really exploring the stories of everybody in the town but this game has made me realize that that

component does need to be like if you're going to invest in a world in the way that a farming game kind of asks you to, like, that world needs to be worth investing in. And, I don't know, Fey Farm has a real problem with, it does all of the things that Stardew does and this genre does, but it does this one thing much, much worse. And if you are going to come for the king,

it feels like you have to come pretty correct. and so I, I've, uh, I've had a hard time. I was really looking forward to this one coming out fully. Um, but I am having a hard time kind of really clicking with it because it just

doesn't, uh, I don't know without the world feeling you know vibrant and filled with characters who are exciting that i want to get to know like it's it is not really uh clicking with the starting the stardew valley subreddit uh is filled with people doing am i the asshole posts of their like relationships with the various characters but not saying that it's the game so it'll like come up in my home feed of reddit and i'll be reading and i'll be like holy shit this person is like an absolute monster and then at the end it'll be like and we

turned our children into doves i'll be like oh yeah this is probably stardew valley is that a thing that happens in stardew yeah if you want to get rid of your kids, you can turn them into doves. Yeah. Wow. There's a term for it that I'm not going to share on the... I wanted to recommend briefly a podcast. May I? Please.

I suppose. It's called Who's Chat on the Floor at My Wedding. Oh, yes. Did you listen to this, Chris? Oh, yes. It is a true crime podcast hosted by a woman named Lauren Kilby who has self-styled herself as a detective

who is helping her friends Karen and Helen who got married in 2018 on a boat. And while they were being married, after their wedding at the reception on the boat, it was discovered that someone had shit on the floor of the bathroom. And it was discovered during the wedding. is Lauren and Helen and Karen interviewing everyone they could reach, doing reenactments, returning to see the crime, bringing in British naval officers to chase down a submarine-based theory about the person who pooped at the wedding.

These interrogations of their friends and fans like their moms and stuff just interrogating people to try to get and there's like false leads they're following there's like um people who are sending them like secret notes about who they think did it there's like actual crimes that get committed connected connected to the whole thing. It is more, moreover, the, the overall mystery is like a little bit of a parody, right? Like obviously, but the, uh, the way they pursue it is so, so funny. I cannot think of the last time I laughed so hard at a podcast as I did it every episode, um, of, of this show it's especially if you like this kind of podcast like true crime podcasts uh the way they're like playing with the tropes um

and uh and stuff like that sounds like american vandal in that yeah spirit um but real real but real yes but real um which makes it super charming it's so funny it came out in 2021 i think they're working on like a follow-up of some sort but uh um it's great it's really really good plant yeah i i have a book there uh frank lance who uh founded the nyu Game Center and also co-created Drop 7, one of my favorite games of all time. And also Universal Paperclips, one of my other favorite games of all time, has a new book out called The Beauty of Games.

And it's just a really smart and funny person writing about video games. It's technically like a... It's published from some university, but it does not read like academic at all. It reads like just a short, nice book of video game criticism. I think a lot of people would like it.

And then also The Faculty. It's on Criterion Channel. Wait, wait, the movie? Because why not? The movie The Faculty, they're doing high school horror this month. And The Faculty is on. Jon Stewart gets stabbed in the eye with a pencil in that movie, right?

A pen full of cocaine. Oh, sorry. My mistake. Yeah, yeah. It's just a great 90s movie. If you want to watch something with Jon Stewart andett and like ever like that whole crew of that era you got it right you could play sea of stars and then watch the faculty and have a whole night of eye-stabbing moments i would uh i would i want to mention real quick that uh because i just went to

go get it uh the book that plant mentioned it looks like that's out october 3rd uh the beauty of games um so you must have like a cool. He's a cool guy. Inside track. It was like a humble brag, basically. It was such a humble brag, he didn't even mention the part where he got it early. Or it might be a situation like that.

You went and got a copy of it, and then you already had it early too. No, I went to go buy it, and it's like, you can't. It's just for playing. This might be an early edition situation. We don't know. Oh, that is true. Is someone dropping off on your porch?

Yeah, that's my curse, is i actually do get messages from the future but it's like it's it's only books about video games it's not and it's unfortunate okay i want to thank the following people for writing for uh reviews for the besties on apple podcasts we have willis only nz27 and ajp23 what do we talk about really quick chris plant oh my gosh we talked about all sorts of stuff we're gonna have it in the newsletter besties.fan you can go find it there the games we talked about the sea of stars and the making of karateka i wow i don't know why he said it like that you said it's so weird karateka it's i it scans weird doesn't it like i've i've done what you just did a lot there the word scans karateka it's like karate i know how to say it karateka look at it it looks like karate karateka

karateka okay and then a bunch of other stuff that you will find with links at besties.fan. Next week, we are talking about two big, big, big people are hyped about them games. The first is Lies of P, which is Pinocchio Dark Souls. And then the other one is Party Animals, which is the most wishlist game on Steam this year, maybe in a few years, people are super excited about this game and I can't wait to play them both. Great. That's going to be next week. Be sure to join us again next week for the best news because shouldn't the world's best friends pick up the world's best games? Bye! Besties!