The Besties - Showcasing Our Athleticism with Nintendo Switch Sports

Episode Date: May 6, 2022

This week, we're tapping into the Old Ways of E-Bowling and Cyber-Tennis in Nintendo Switch Sports! It's like falling off a log, only the log is a sword, and we're using it to battle our children. Also discussed: Halo Infinite Season 2, Stanley Parable Ultra Deluxe, Knotwords 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!

Can we discuss Daniel Radcliffe as Weird Al Yankovic in the trailer that was just released? And his enormous and powerful body. Dude is cut. Was Weird... Listen. Yeah. Listen, I'm a 41-year-old white man who was overweight in middle school. Of course I like Weird Al.

Don't get me wrong. But I don't remember him ever being jacked yeah but do you ever remember him being shirtless is the follow-up except in the the the rambo bit from uhf see i think that's it is that it i you want to do it for real no i think i think this movie it's a blend i think it's a biopic and a uhf reboot okay oh my god yeah go back and watch the trailer with that mind and tell me that's not true it's just i was watching the trailer thinking oh boy it's gonna be so good to hear all these fun songs again and my god harry potter's big strong body is waking me up and it's 8 a.m i I'm not ready for this. This is my coffee.

This is my coffee. It might just be a Carrot Top situation where Weird Al was always yoked and we just didn't know. Maybe. I think Carrot Top got yoked because he needed to defend himself. It was a defense mechanism. I mean, I love Weird Al.

I love the music, love the music but the visual of the boy who lived in that is just too much oh shit My name is Justin McElroy and I know the best game of the week. My name is Griffin McElroy and I know the best game of the week. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant and I know the best game of the week. My name is Russ Froschig and I know the best game of the week.

Best game of the week. My name is Russ Rushing and I have the best game of the week. Welcome to the besties where we talk about the latest and greatest in home interactive inter-game-ment. It is a video game club, but just by listening, my friend, you are an official member. Here's your card and your parking. Let me validate that. Oh, take me in. Take me into Nintendo Switch Sports.

It's just the name does not feel good to say. Have you all noticed this? When you say the name of it, it feels bad to say it. It was nicer when it was Wii Sports. Wii Sports. That's a nice ring to it. It's just fun to say. It wasn't Nintendo Wii Sports.

Yes. Switch Sports is weird it's not a good yeah maybe it's nintendo switch is just a bad name for the console what is it what is this what is this thing oh yeah chris oh this thing well nintendo went and made a sequel to wii sports and i know that there are there's technically another sequel, Wii Sports Resort, and there's technically a remake on the Nintendo Wii U, but, baby, this is the real sequel. This feels like they decided, no longer a tech demo, now a video game,

if you can get the online functionality to work. This may be our most contentious. Hearing that setup makes me think this may be one of the most contentious episodes of the besties i can't wait for it i'm going to have to because we got to pay the bills then we'll be right back to talk about nintendo switch sports so at the outset of uh just just a few moments ago before the break chris plant described this game as a sequel to wii sports and i don't agree with that assessment i know griffin had some hesitance as well and i this does not feel like a sequel to me so i'm curious why can you sort of dive into that why would i say it's a sequel because it's a sequel

what are you talking about because it so what you're let me guess what you're thinking yeah this is not a sequel this is a a remake a reboot maybe even because it's got tennis and it's got bowling and those things were in the original game right it's also got badminton volleyball soccer and chambara or sword fighting which were not in the original game so chambara was in a resort though yes yeah i mean but i exactly but we're talking about is this a sequel is it a sequel yeah i guess a sequel i guess for me my impression uh and and we'll kind of go into what this game actually is but also add online online is probably the huge and it has online but but predominantly it's a motion sports game and there aren't very many of those this might be the only one that comes out this year these days uh where you're

playing through these various games and obviously with wii sports being a thing that everyone experienced in one way or the other it was a big deal back then this to me feels like for the people that do not want to dig out their we which is probably at the bottom of a lake somewhere at this point oh well um they now have the option to not have to it's a find it and they can play games they'll play the games that they love but it doesn't feel even though there are new games to this for some reason it doesn't feel like a sequel. It more or less feels like a quality of life thing where it's like, you now have these games that you enjoyed on a platform that actually is a

thing in your house. That was my impression of it. At least this semantic discussion. Fascinating to me. I'm not sure it's the most like accessible place to start the discussion but that's probably love it if we get five more minutes i'm gonna say seven more minutes of semantic discussion about remake of what a sequel is yeah sure yeah yeah yeah yeah let's do let's do it this way there's six games in this thing and and we and i would i would say sword fighting

is fun literally about the same thing as the sword fighting mode that was included in wii sports resort except without like the insane super fun horde mode oh i didn't play that horde mode oh it was great wait you didn't are you sure i was thinking about it was really fun you would like walk through uh like it was like on rails down a path and you would just have like several combatants come at you and they would have the faces of the me's that you have oh that does actually pull it from online uh and it was really fun this one doesn't have that just has the just has the one dual mode um but it's you know that's fun me and me and henry uh and and uh juice and the his kids that we all had a good time sort of swatting away at each other with that one.

Badminton is small tennis. Fast tennis. Fast small tennis. Fast small tennis. No, it's not fast tennis. Fast and small. Or wait, fast and slow. Well, not in this one.

It's back and forth. In this one, tennis is a little bit slower. It's doubles only. There's no singles mode in tennis, so that's one, they just changed that. But they do have badminton in here for you, and you can kind of hit the badminton to the shuttlecock to go up or you can smash it down and that's very fun um and then there is a third net based experience which is volleyball which i do not care for at all uh because it is also doubles and it relies on good teamwork with motion controls,

which is a crap shoot, or good teamwork with AI, which, did anybody like volleyball? I did. Chris Plant loved volleyball. I genuinely thought people were going to like this game. I enjoy the game. I enjoy the game. No, no, no, no, not just the game, but volleyball.

I thought volleyball was miserable. Please, Plant, explain to me what uh appealed to you and how it differentiates between describe how it works yeah so you you you like i don't know the terms where it's like you set the ball is that right so what's the first one you serve it normally fine right bump yes so yeah so let's say they're serving it to you and then you are are the person who's in charge of bumping it. So, you know, the ball comes at you and you bump it. Bump it up into the air. And then your partner or AI sets it.

I'm just describing volleyball. Yeah, literally. When you bump it. So, when you bump it, you, like, put your hands together kind of, like, at your waist. When you set it, you put it over your head i mean you're still describing it i know no i know but i'm just trying to describe like the motions of it yeah those are the motions it's all about how how simple do you make it right yeah what i liked about volleyball is it is it's three different motions rather than like most of

these games which are like okay just either flail or do the exact same repetitive motion over and over yeah badminton has a little bit of strategy to it like you can hold in the trigger to kind of do a like a soft like yeah drop shot uh to try and like you know position your thing but like i don't know i feel like that like that was something that you could kind of do in Wii Sports Tennis. The games that I liked in this bundle are the games that come closest to the motion that you do in real life when you're playing those games. Even though I realize that those motions you were just talking about in volleyball are things that you do in real life volleyball, it still felt pretty removed from the experience of playing actual volleyball. Ditto for soccer.

For me, I didn't like soccer. But the games that I loved, tennis, a lot of fun, badminton, a lot of fun, bowling, a lot of fun. The sword fighting was okay for me, but not my favorite. I think when played two-player, the sword play is a real highlight.

Sword fighting is really fun with two people. Especially with kids, because they get really fucking into it which mode do you play do you play one sword a laser sword or a double sword i mean we were playing with kids so we weren't trying to complicate things too much we were just doing regular regular old sword but like watching henry and charlie just like duke it out duel of the fates style was like very satisfying um and that's sort of why i am surprised that the emplant alluded to this earlier surprised at the emphasis of online for this game because i think the second you go online a lot of the magic of this sort of goes away and i think this remains a very much a same room same system kind of experience uh i'll just really quickly explain

how the online works you essentially if you're playing online you can play with one other person so if you want to like do a low up and then hop online you can do that but effectively you're being matched with random people you actually do not know for 100 certainty if you're playing a real person or a bot because they do slide in bots uh in the mix but effectively you jump into the game and and then you're playing these various sports but because i don't know there there is something that is removed that not seeing the other person flailing or getting as into it as you are the games don't have enough depth to make you feel like wow i really earned that win it more feels like just like a a trial of like endurance the

the hardcore bowling mode i do like bowling but bowling is bowling was in wii sports bowling was in wii sports resort oh yeah i'm saying the the the the holding mode where they add obstacles yeah i mean that's that is fun as well. Yeah, I would say that that feels... I mean, I'm just talking about online competitive. That is the thing where I feel, oh, I brought a level of skill to this. There's a mastery to the bowling

that is not present in nearly any of the other games. Maybe it's soccer. There's a soccer mode that feels like um really wacky uh oh my gosh car soccer rocket league rocket league i mean it feels yeah like slow i mean really slow yeah there's just a lot of really just running which is soccer soccer is a lot of running and i do but there is a giant ball that a big ball is fun i do wish that that was incorporated in real life soccer. You know, it's interesting.

I don't have a ton of thoughts about this game, so I just want to bundle them all up in one. I think this is cool that it exists. I think it's nice to have something that... I kind of missed an era that I think would have been great with kids my age where motion was a much bigger deal. They're pretty good at especially like intuitive experiences like this like understanding that if I swing this it'll make the racket go right I did it with Cooper she's four Charlie obviously gets it pretty easily she's seven so it's not a big deal but

I think it's cool to exist I think for it to be something that it's like there's there's a vibe i get and i might be misreading it so please tell me but to me this feels like kind of a shrug from nintendo it kind of feels like offered and if you want it okay but if not like that it doesn't seem to to be that big of a focus for them i want like the ideal situation for me would be a Nintendo Switch Sports that is like a platform that is constantly being like tweaked and new games and that kind of thing. Or even like an adventure mode would be kind of neat. There's a lot, a lot, a lot.

A setting that has any character at all, right? Like Wii Sports Resort, one of the best things about it was it takes place on Woohoo Island, which is, like, really stupid, but then there's, like, a super chill, like, flight mode where you can just kind of fly all around Pilotwings style and, like, check out this dope island resort. Like, this game, you just, like, press the button

and it loads up. Well, you're in a future mall. It should be noted. You are in a future mall. I guess that's something. Well, it it's like not as cool splatoon like it feels like a little bit more mainstream that said all of this i think all these are like very fair points well i just if i could just yeah it even goes as far as like uh with the chambara i wanted to turn the timer off because i was playing with a four-year-old

and I was trying to let her win. And like, or just like have a longer sword fight, but like, you can't even do that, right? So it's like the level of, it's not bad. It's just like so threadbare. I feel like it is not going to have much of an impact. And even for like a party scenario where way sports really shined i i feel like this would not be a like this feels like more of a novelty than

something that's going to like keep people playing um for for an extended period of time i i i think all this is like extremely true for us and probably like a majority of our listeners capital g gamers with a z at the end i do think this is not designed with us in mind i think this is nintendo doing the thing that they used to do where they would release a game that was like completely not for the core gaming set because this game an example of this when i go to like my kids school nobody cares about what i do until this week when suddenly people have all downloaded switch sports for their families and revealed one that they even own a switch and i i think if you like same with you if you look online or if you look at polygon's team who some of them obviously play games some of them don't some of them are in our entertainment group

everyone is playing this game and is obsessed with it um so I think like things like you know in venture mode or any of those things would they be great additions most definitely do I think like they matter to the type of people who want who remember wii sports from 15 years ago like no not at all i agree with that but i would also say like nintendo has a reputation for providing a lot of value in their purchases like when you think about breath of the wild or you think about mario odyssey and stuff like that they tend to build these games and and look they're gonna have post-release content for this i know golf is being added later so there will be post-release content after the fact but it just doesn't like when i compare this product to wii sports the original wii sports

that came out i believe this is 40 i think uh if you buy it it just doesn't seem like that much of a value step up for something that they are now boxing and selling as a game. I completely agree with you that they can get away with not necessarily like boxing and selling a huge upgrade, you know, to go back to the sequel thing, but it just,

it seems a little counter to Nintendo's ethos of like, we're really going to like knock your socks off in terms of the presentation and everything that's being offered and, and stuff like for me it's not it's not this isn't an upgrade like i there's six games on this thing and i i played three of them once or twice and was like well i don't want to play that i don't want to play soccer anymore i don't want to play volleyball anymore that's not very fun for me so i'm not going to play that one anymore right and wii sports resort had i think 12 or 13 and sure you know canoeing wasn't the most fun but i would say about you know the sword play in that was really fun and way more fleshed out with like more game modes

than it is in this one disc golf was fun fun. Archery was fun. Golf was fun. You can't launch with fucking golf? Guys? It's coming in fall 2022. You can't launch with golf? What's taking so long to get

golf in there? Because you've done it once or twice before. They're playing golf is the problem. That's what they're spending all their time on. They need the research. It just feels like less than you want. It really does. I wanted this to be a big return to form

and it just feels like so bare bones. And yet, I do want to say, I completely agree with all that. second that i'm like in it when i'm playing tennis or when i'm playing badminton i am in it in like i'm standing up i'm getting it even though i know that i don't have to even though i know i could just like do a slight little waggle with the remote i get into it and it like does transform me i i want it to be more on the edges like more

on the on the various features and stuff like that but the actual core of it remains really quite good i actually think that's what frustrated me so much though like uh and in my head by the way i was spell frustrated with an russ just to help help me it's like a mnemonic device not frustrated frustrated frustrated i'm russ frustrated um no i like it felt fun to be back doing that again like it works like the this when it's on it's on and like that's what made me want like wish there was more of it is because it is working right like if they released a new rock band today and it was really fun but it had eight songs you wouldn't be like well this is great because it's still like you still want more um and i and i mean it is a 40 game like i mean you know i'm not here we're not

here to like assign say whether or not it's a good value but it did feel like i would be moving on from it quicker than i i have otherwise, I think. Sorry, go ahead. I would have preferred a re-release of Wii Sports Resort called Switch Sports Resort or something along those lines. Or at least a compilation of the best stuff they've done in Wii Sports, Wii Sports Resorts, and I'll go ahead and say it, Wii Play. And Wii Play had some fun shit on it. You know what I mean? Like they've done this thing two consoles ago way better.

And it is wild to me that they could not at least recapture that. What about 1-2-Switch? That's nothing. That's nothing. Hey, Plant, you think about stuff like this. I want to ask you a question that is tangential to this. Not tangential. It's part of it.

I think part of the superpower of Wii sports is that it was not something where you had to go get a camera and plug it in and get the right amount of space and all this stuff. It's like in native to the console. How, how do you think the experiences experience is of like the switch as a platform for this kind of experience? I think it's great.

I was expecting the worst because i previously have had terrible experiences with the joy cons uh when it comes to motion control i don't know if anybody played the mario golf with oh yeah but it was not great there's some like mandatory update that you get with this game right from the top and that does something and i don't like i think the update doesn't even work with some third-party controllers yet it does not so i i would love to know more about the technical side there but all in all yeah i found it like totally fine how well it worked i it felt comparable i don't know if it felt like as good as the um wii motion plus the add-on yeah they they gave to we but it it felt like as good as like original

we emotes for me there were for me like the rubber hit the road with um the bowling in we sports resort which is where you got the the we motion plus going uh because i felt like i i had complete control over like the amount of spin i was putting on the ball same with same with golf like if i hooked a swing on golf like i I felt it and I knew I fucked it up in that precise way. I don't think you get that exactly with the Switch Joy-Con, but I was also, I would say, pleasantly surprised that it works as well as it does because I have had similar sort of uh fidelity problems with with those little guys ignoring the accuracy the fidelity stuff just in terms of like the actual holding of it do you prefer holding the joy-con or a wii remote with motion plus definitely the wii motion plus with well but i'm not talking about the actual fidelity of it i'm just like the actual build of it the

hand feel of this thing that feels like a fucking lightsaber. Are you kidding me? That shit, with the little condom grip that they slip over it, that's ribbed for my pleasure. You cannot beat that. That is the best feeling shit ever. I was heartbroken when they started to, when they released, I think it was like the third generation Wiimote

that had the Motion Plus integrated in it. Yeah. I remember that was a big thing. I think when Sky like the third generation Wii mode that had the motion plus integrated in it. Yeah. I remember that was a big thing. I think when twilight or, um, Skyward sword came out, it came, you could get it like a special edition with the Zelda gold controller that

had the Wii motion. So you didn't have that extra bit of like a counterweight at the bottom of the hilt of the thing. I, I, I am a, uh, you know,

of a, a pervert for game controllers that feel good, and you cannot beat an old-school Joy-Con. That is actually kind of what I... The experience of playing it, I think it works great. I am irritated by, like, okay, well, I got to get it. And I know none of this sounds like a big deal, but I have my Switch sort of behind the TV, right?

So I got gotta reach back there and slide the little guys off of there and then i have to put the little attachments onto the things and i gotta remember to put them back docked back onto the console at the end of it because otherwise they won't charge and then i have these two little dumaflotchis that i have to go put in a cupboard or something, or there's going to be lying around. It's just like not quite as seamless as the Wii was. I think I have a good way to set expectations for everybody listening to this show for this game, where they will either like it as much as I do or not as much like I feel like y'all are at. I think y'all have the expectation for this game to be as fresh mentioned you know

zelda or mario i think that you might enjoy this game more dear listener if you come in with this as a me topia or a big brain academy or even like a super mario party okay finally we're mentioning one that like people have actually played hey Hey, Big Brain Academy is like a massive franchise. No, you're right. That's true. What I'm saying is, these are like, I think there's kind of two tiers of Nintendo games. All the games that I mentioned before this are like, I don't know, there's an audience for this, but it's not, again, the capital G gamer. I think it just falls more in that camp. The other thing, and this is, now now I'm just being an apologist.

I'll admit it right up top. I am curious how, if they're using this game as a test balloon for updating or creating a living game in the future. Because we know golf is coming for it. When you get into the online mode, it tells you that there's new accessories and stuff that you get for playing every week. So we know that they'll be adding to that and between all of that and then the mario kart thing where they're just like basically releasing the new mario kart game as dlc over the next two years i'm just yeah i mean they've done that we'll see more i was gonna say splatoon 2 is like a living game effectively like they more or less have done this in the past this does not feel a drastically different from what splatoon 2 was doing especially with the cosmetics and stuff

like that um yeah i mean it might just be a 40 game where they're just happy that hey it's it's more wii sports and i think that feels more if you want yeah if you don't want to throw this down a well because you you slaughtered somebody with your old wii go for it it's so dusty no one wants to touch that white little cube it's so dusty i actually have one of the black ones and it is like it is uh it's more of a sort of modeled modeled hue uh this character creator sucks it's not very good it's pointless although they have my haircut, which is cool. Well, you can change it to just your we head, which is what I did. Your me head.

Well, we find ourselves at the, I mean, 8 out of 10 fun factor probably gets a 9. Sorry, I feel like if we don't say that, people do get really pissed off if we do not. They do. Yeah, you always got to. Because they don't know how much how much fun they're gonna have our tilt is five out of ten okay uh let's let's take a quick break and come back and talk more motion control i feel like this is sort of a a peek back into the past where there was this moment where the entire world was enraptured by motion control, obviously, with Kinect and Wii Sports and Move controllers and stuff like that.

The question I have for y'all is, what is the, like, not traditional game input that will happen in the future? Or is that just never going to happen anymore? You know, we've seen plastic guitar controllers. We've seen the motion stuff. We've seen Kinect style, like the motion stuff we've seen connect style like camera stuff it's already there another moment that's going to happen that will be like out of the norm of yes quote traditional game yeah it's vr vr's yeah i think it's already happened it happened it's not gonna it happened it happened and it didn't okay but what do you mean like that's how's how you control No, VR counts for this,

but I do think, like, I kind of wonder whether the VR moment has a little bit moved past us. I don't want to turn this into a discussion about VR, but the votes are in.

It's had its shot. Everybody could buy it. It will never be more than a niche. No, no, no. I wouldn't say that. No, I know but they're selling more now than ever had yes that's not mainstream that's not like mass market everybody has

but it's getting yeah i would say it's doing very well get there i would also say that the technology has not reached its its zenith yet and if you want evidence of that like i don't know how you know plugged in anyone is to like VR developments, but like. I'm in the metaverse right now. Oh, okay, cool. Hand emulation, like one-to-one hand emulation using the built-in sort of cameras on like a Quest headset is like a new and incredibly dope thing where you can just see a video of somebody like picking up a you know a ring off of a table using like really really really accurate hand tracking like technology that's that you know to not have it be a third person sort of thing like connect

and have it be instead like from within looking without i think is a is is a huge thing that is still changing and still getting better so and i and i think justin the moment that you're talking about the reason i'm not going to rule out vr entirely is because we are still at a point even with the quest which is a wireless and relatively light it's still a pretty big headset that the second and this will take a while but the second that it is like the weight of my eyeglasses there is a shot for vr to actually go mainstream i honestly believe that yet whether it's like a media viewing device or whatever it is and so i i think it's a way the okay i want to use we sports as an example of why i have a problem with this

we sports is incredible uh and it's incredible the same way the rock band was incredible but i'm going to focus on we sports we sports the reason the we became such a big deal and and we sports i think deserves literally all the credit for for like the incredible generational shift that it was, was that you could have someone over to your house and it's like a fucking Tupperware party. You have someone over to your house and you are selling the Wii to them. Right?

Like, sure. I saw this moment a dozen times, right? When the Wii, someone would come over, they're not into games. They're not big into games.

They'd pick up the Wii mode. They'd play tennis with somebody. They think, Oh, this is actually really fun. I really like this. Poof, grandma's got a Wii under the TV. And then the cycle continues.

The cycle perpetuates. That works equally with kids and families who want to do something together. That is what was so cool about motion control and why I do think that it will return in some format. I feel like VR will – unless someone comes up with a very, very smart way, and I can't even sort of fictionalize what this would be, to turn it into a more communal thing that you're doing in a room full of people like i can't even share with my kids because they can't navigate the the menus and stuff and i can't yeah i'm gonna explain the scenario this is how i view it but again this is five to ten who knows if it's ever gonna happen but if it happens i picture it as i go to my friend's house i bring six glasses everyone puts on a glass you are i have to i assume like richie rich like the the no no

they're sold that you get them as part of mcdonald's happy meals 15 dollars oh okay it costs 15 thank you guys this makes perfect sense now so and and everyone sits around and uh has that experience um that is the only scenario where i think we can nail the tupperware party moment i've tried doing it with like the quest and people have a cool time but it's you're right it's one person at a time it's slow other people aren't really seeing what you're seeing so there's that it's like i have to get you into the game so you don't have to figure out how to navigate the menus and then once i'm there i'll take this off my sweaty head yes yeah let's go back to the original question because vr that's not what i meant what i meant was okay so what's next motion control gaming moment is the question

right yes going all the way back when i say v, what I mean is people are already designing motion control games in VR. If some of them are good, you could literally just make motion control games for any of the other consoles and just put it on a TV. What I'm saying is there is tons of development happening to create motion control video games and find actual good ones, right? Which was the problem with the Wii, was that they and find actual good ones right which was the problem with the wii

was that they just weren't good ones like outside of nintendo switch sports sorry wii sports oh my god and right now for the first time a ton of development is going into motion control games and i think a number of those would work perfectly fine if you put like a little webcam on your computer or on your TV and then you could play those games on your TV. That's a good point. I think that to go to a different route, I feel like the future of motion control, one possible future could be one of the problems with the solutions that we came up in the 360 era were like or PlayStation Eye or, or PlayStation eye or whatever is you have to go get this camera. You have to plug it in. You have to have it at the right place. The lighting has to be right.

All that stuff is sort of like nascent technology hiccups. I do think there is a reality in which we capitalize on the fact that we are all like walking around with incredibly powerful cameras like in our pockets where a dock where you just pop your phone there and that is like sensing your body and you're immediately like doing motion control stuff like basically if the connect was a phone that you just which is what your phone is now yes right like it's already there have connected it's already doing lidar and right we don't have to do any we don't have to worry about any of that you just pop it in front of the tv and you're going like i feel like that if you if you sanded down a lot

of the that stuff i feel like we could have uh it could bring motion control back in a way that would be like fun and and accessible again and not like a huge pain in the ass yeah and to be to be clear i wasn't specifically saying only motion gaming in terms of like the next generation i just meant like something what is the new version of the equivalent of motion well so this is this is motion still but i think it's different and closer to what you're talking about fresh motion controls on your phone, which is a thing phone companies have been flirting with for,

I don't know, five years, where you don't touch your screen. You can give symbols to it or air swipes or any of those things. I wouldn't be surprised if we see something novel like that in the next few years. Someone's got to nail that hologram, am I right?

It's not possible. I don't know't know holograms are pretend that's in star trek star wars came out in the 70s they seem to have nailed it star wars is real star wars is real another perfect ending to be segment yep another great another great slam dunk chris point do we have some reader mail yeah i got some mail um uh this one's from steve is local multiplayer dying or are we grown-ass millennials just out of touch is local multiplayer worth saving reinventing in a post-covid world uh i mean i feel like a lot of people just play games on discord together now yeah like and it feels like local multiplayer to them but i also think that like if we were in a dorm or like you had a big family local multiplayer

would be totally amazing and incredible like that seems like the it just seems like person to person what your given situation is yeah but i also think that online multiplayer has become pretty easy and very stable and uh it local multiplayer was always a pain in the ass sure there are certain experiences that you cannot recreate online especially like a rock band right uh but then again i don't think we'll ever get it an era like that ever again so um it's it's changing i don't know if it's dying yeah i don't think it's dying i i think there's like a lot of good stuff i mean just just yesterday i played switch sports and the new kirby a looking multiplayer with my son and those are great experiences i mean you also can't discount the fact that like it's been going on for over two

years like the the we're talking about post-covid world we've lived in a world for two years where like we have been discouraged from being in a room full of people like people have changed and adapted like i i don't reinventing is probably like uh i i mean i i think there's a much better use case for local multiplayer on like phones i've had like a better experiences with that recently where like um a game like uh out of the loop which is great for like you're waiting for dinner to come so you're playing like a sort of pass the phone type deal it's also i feel like we have this is a small thing but these things these sorts of things add up i feel like local multiplayer has been partially impacted

because navigating the various like user accounts and logins and sign-ins and all that stuff with like modern consoles is not it is not as seamless uh when you're trying to like just play with somebody else you know like it's it's there's uh more hoops to jump through i feel like in the in the modern era of of console ui it is getting a little better i think once you've done it once with someone it's pretty fluid for a number of games like fortnite for example once you've become epic friends jumping into a multiplayer game with them is a total breeze. Would you say we're epic friends?

That's a good question. I'd have to really consider that. But I think it's game to game. You're right. Can we talk about this next one? I'm excited. Okay, this one's from Lisey. Favorite E3 moment?

E3 is effectively dead. I mean, it's certainly dead this year. I don't know if it's dead forever. I mean, it will be. It's not looking good. It's not looking good. I have one. I think it'll be Jeff 3.

Jeff 3, I think, is a better... G3. G3 is like a better possible... I just think Keeley will run the... I mean, he's already doing it with civil games. Right. Exactly. But I feel like if,

if, if we need this event, it will be Keeley. It will not be the, the, uh, uh, ESRB.

So I, I will share my favorite E3 moment, which was, uh, I think it was my first E3 ever. And I was attending as a member, member of the now defunct UGO.com, which doesn't exist anymore.

But my boss at the time, Eric Eckstein, was an E3 judge. And for many years, they would have these groups of people that in addition to being able to effectively cut the lines to see the games, you would also have personal demos to go hands-on with the games stuff like that and because he was only one person there were many games to check out frequently you would sort of divide and conquer among the staff who got to like represent the e3 judging for your uh team i had the fortune of seeing half-Life 2, a demo for Half-Life 2. It was like the first E3 I attended. And I just remember going to the like dark room and getting the demo. I think probably Gabe or maybe Chet did the demo.

But it was, I just remember it being like so incredible and awe-inspiring. And like it was this narrative story of like you being in an apartment building and it getting raided by like the city 17 cops and just like like such head and shoulders above everything else that i had seen what i later learned because the the build actually leaked pretty famously for half-life 2 was almost all that was smoke and mirrors as it is for almost every E3 demo where like the whole thing was very scripted and uh you could really like go around and do whatever you wanted and it wouldn't uh really impact what was going on on screen but the game did come out and was great so I forgive them for that forever but it was it was an amazing moment

when I saw it uh I mean it's tough to beat Mr. Caffeine. I don't really know how to beat, I don't know what is better than Mr. Caffeine. Do you want to bring people up to speed on Mr. Caffeine? Mr. Caffeine was the host of the, I believe, 2011 Ubisoft E3 press conference. And his name was Mr. Caffeine because he was somewhat excitable.

And it was, and listen, live performing, I get it. It's tough, but it was the it was and listen live performing i get it it's tough but it was one of the worst things i've ever seen in my whole life and i remember covering that like in the the joystick like war room was just a lot of just like mouth agape just disbelief at like is he really doing the wayne's world for the fifth time this press conference is this happening and uh you know for me it is moments like those that really stand out in my mind like the we music thing with ravi drums or the time that peter moore uh failed a rock band demo live uh there's a lot there's a lot of stuff to to pull from there in terms of good things i would say when they announced the 3ds and then we went and played it and the 3d like

worked that was that was yeah that was fucking cool that was wild the only bad thing about that that was when they strapped the 3ds they were attached to young woman yes yeah yeah yikes yeah like that's bad about every way yeah that's not great the two that jump out to me i'm like i don't know about like it's the weird stuff that sticks out to me more than anything else the two that like really um i three very quick one i remember patrick klepek used to work for mtv and we were headed over to an MTV party and he was like, I'm not supposed to tell you this, but The Who is going to be there. And that was, remember that rock band party? Sure. That was wild.

They were for him. They were for him, yeah. Second was Peter Moore when Fable The Journey came out. He made everybody who saw the game. No, no, Peter Molyneux. Peter Molyneux, thank you. He made everybody who saw the game sign a wall swearing that it's not an Unreal shooter, even though it definitely is.

That was something else. I did not sign the wall. I refused to. I'm like, I signed it. Look at it. Look at it, Pete. It's an Unreal shooter, bud. The third one was when Ubisoft was promoting the Avatar video game, which did exist.

And James Cameron came out and I was like, oh, fuck James Cameron. And then James Cameron proceeded to describe the final moments of Avatar in such excruciating detail that everyone in the room, you could feel it. Everyone in the room's like how is he still fucking talking about this like it went on look it up sometime it's unbelievable the man spoke for like 15 minutes of in the most boring fashion possible about like and then there's like these dragons right it had it fully had like seven-year-old telling you about their dream energy, right? And then grandma came over and she had marshmallow hands. It was unbelievable. Mine is also tied to Avatar.

I went to the Behind Closed Doors demo, and John Landau, who's the other producer of Avatar, was showing it, and there was a 100 inch TV the first in the world and they spent so much time letting us know how great it was that we got to see a 100 inch TV and I had heard that they were going

to screen Avatar this is like many many months before it comes out nobody had even seen footage of it yet and I went up to the publicist and was like hey Lil birdie told me that uh you're gonna show avatar and i would hate to have to like tell people about that he's like how about you don't threaten me ever again and i will put you on a bus to go see avatar i saw it was 15 minutes of footage and i sat with like basically people who worked on the game and uh i came back

to the ugo office where russ freshdick worked and i told everybody this is the single most important thing to happen in cinema since the wizard of oz and let me tell you i was probably not right i mean it's cool it's cool but i think i think I was a little bit, I was, I think I, I had a little bit too much of the, the hype juice. Can I, can I just, cause it's one of my favorite things and I found it real quick. Can I play you guys just a few moments of James Cameron talking about

Avatar at E3, 2000. Oh boy. Jesus. Oh no. To be primitive, foes and arrows and primitive weapons and that sort of thing. But ultimately proved to be much wiser than we are. be primitive. Foes and arrows are primitive weapons and that sort of thing. But they ultimately

prove to be much wiser than we are. The Na'vi are 10 feet tall, blue skin, striped like tigers. They have long tails. They're quite fierce looking. And they can be ferocious warriors when they're provoked. But normally, as when humans are not trapped on their planet they live harmoniously in their forest environment now humans can't breathe the air on pandora so in the major conceit of the story is that it was decided to create it's unreal right it's unreal this video this video is six minutes long it's part part one of two. Like, imagine it. What is wilder than someone describing to you what Amazon is like? Look, he didn't go into the hair fucking, so that is a big win.

That's true. That's true, which I think they cut out of Disney+. Wait, really quick. Can I share my honest favorite E3 moment personally? Yeah. Sure. I was doing a stand-up, like, direct-to-camera. It was the end of E3. It's been a hard week.-up like direct to camera and it was the end of e3 it's been a hard

week i'm talking directly to camera i'm doing my like fourth or fifth take about i don't know some new assassin's creed and out of nowhere this dude just walks directly in front of me and the camera right between us looks directly at me boops my nose and just goes too cute and then walks away and it was the single most life affirming thing that's ever happened you needed that didn't you because I was not too cute at that point

but it really made me feel too cute I've never forgotten it I'll miss E3 you should know though that like if you hear journalists opining for E3 and like mourning it i think that that's like it was a fun time to be a video game fan but really it was a really fun like especially if you worked remotely um it was really important i mean to have that

sort of time where you're with people like that's where a lot of the joy really of e3 was not to memorialize it for too long but like seeing people that i only talked to virtually for like a week and and uh having that experience with them that's what like i feel like most journalists that you hear talk about plus it's like very hard satisfying work uh for for a week um that is what I will miss, like the communal nature of it. Like you just can't beat the fun of being in a room full of really smart, funny people who love the same thing you do and like watching a press conference

in that room full of people. I mean, it's like beyond fun. That is one of the absolute highlights of the job that I will always look back on fondly. To really hammer home the metaphor, doing that all day, and then everyone going to the exact same hotel and hanging around a pool

that is shaped like a coffin. Truly demoralizing. A real fun time. Anybody been playing anything else? I've been playing the second season of Halo Infinite, which just launched yesterday.

Is it good? Booted it up. Season one lasted six months, which is a very long time for a season of a living game to last, but it lasted six months. And season two is also scheduled to last six it lasts for six months uh and season two is also scheduled the last six months which seems also quite long but uh it has added a new mode called last spartan standing mode which is effectively a free-for-all mode uh where like 12 or so people are dropped

into a very large map like one of the big maps and it kind of is a mix of like gun game where as you get kills your like gear upgrades and then eventually it turns into a battle royale where like a big circle shows up and starts shrinking to sort of like ensure that everyone finds each other super fun really satisfying it you know i'm always kind of blown away at how good the like minute to minute core of halo infinite is because it really is strong. The the trappings, the like outside of it still feels like they have a lot of work ahead of them in terms of progression and unlocks and whatever else. But the actual minute it's only been six months. Give them time.

Well, and it got that year long delay. So it does genuinely make me wonder what the game was like a year and a half ago um at that point but uh yeah it's uh it is fun i mean if you liked the core of halo infinite definitely worth just trying that mode because it it does kind of breathe a lot of people playing it is it what is there a lot of people playing it does it feel like or you have well i know their user number just i, this is not scientific, but I know their Twitch numbers have been pretty dismal, at least towards the end of the season.

And I think a lot of that has to do with, like, they just weren't releasing new content for a very, very long time. I would imagine it saw something of a spike for the beginning of season two. I mean, I don't have a problem getting into games, for what it's worth, but, you know, maybe if I was in a more remote location, it would be different.

But I had fun. I enjoyed it. I played NotWords, which you suggested last week. That is all I've been playing is NotWords. It's really, really good. I played through like all – I think I've almost played through all the existing puzzles. And now my wife, Sydney, who like will every once in a while get fixated on an iOS game. For a while it was Blendoku.

And then she finished that. And then she played the Benjamin Morris. Is that what it is? The paint company did a Bendoku, which is their like take on Blendoku. But now she's deeply into not words and it's cool because with the daily puzzle it's got a little bit of that uh wordle energy where it's like i haven't done the not words today right and we you know we'll hang out and do it it's it's not words just to remind people i mentioned it last week it was the um it's like a blend of sudoku meets

a crossword puzzle basically um it can be a little tough to get started. It can, yeah. You have to, which like both per puzzle and then also like just generally speaking, you have to kind of, you realize you don't necessarily have the synapses in your brain that you think you have, that you think would be useful in this scenario. But I'm starting to get some tactics and stuff that help.

You need to be okay with guessing and being okay if that's not the right guess and then like acclimating to that it very much is built into that like it it does not feel like a um a failure when you put in the wrong thing it's sort of just like noting it like uh it's part of the experience the hint system in the game is really smart too because you get a certain amount of hints either three or if you have like purchased the full version of the game six hints and every time you solve a puzzle you get one more uh added to that to that pile and all the hint does is you choose like a column or a row and it gives you the crossword puzzle hint

for that thing so it doesn't tell you explicitly what the letter what the word is or it doesn't tell you uh it doesn't solve it for you but instead it would say like um you know whatever i can't generate a fake crossword puzzle hint but uh it's it's very clever and it's a good way to get a foothold on a puzzle that you're really struggling with without feeling like you have like given up or anything like that yeah i really dig it i really haven't been playing anything other than that y'all stanley parable ultra deluxe i'm not gonna talk too much just downloaded it while we've been we don't want to yeah no spoilies um it is fan fucking jastic it's so good it is it's it's incredible whether you have not played if you hey if you have never played stanley parable great news when you start the game it'll ask you and it will help you out so that you uh so you see everything in the right order i guess is how i put what if i haven't

played it like 10 years should i And so this is my next thing. So that's me. I barely remember it. I would say you should still hit the I have played it option. It will be clear for you how you can navigate the game in a way that meets your needs. And you. Yeah. I don't think any don't read about

this game at all don't don't read about it at all just like take it at 100 face value and just go in like without expectations and just sort of let it wash over you it is uh it's really something fucking something else yeah and the the team that made this i mean it's the original creator is the writer but then the studio is um the team that did accounting i believe is what it was called which was um did you did you any of y'all play this speaking of vr games no it was this game that was by um what's the dude who co-created rick and morty yeah justin roiland justin roiland yeah yeah yeah it's a vr game that he made oh right yes studio and it's like delightful but this is made with somebody who like specializes in making excellent video

games and is not vr and i think benefits from both those things um it is yeah i'm not you know what i'm not going to say anything else we're gonna we'll do yeah we'll do a do we'll do a spoil-y um episode or like hidden b segment or whatever in a couple of weeks so it'll give time for everybody listening to play it before then but strongly strongly recommend that you play it if you are the sort of person who likes to um play the games that we talk about at the end of the year especially when they're like high up in our final bracket i think you should play this game because i think it will be in that that zone

cool i wanted to thank the following people for writing reviews for the besties on apple podcasts to love to loves tyly tly loves red the rose alex orlum dewey ocelot and pirate rock thank you for writing reviews for the besties on apple podcasts thank you to everyone else who also wrote reviews on apple podcasts we greatly greatly appreciate it uh very quickly to recap the games that we played this week i mean just a lot of nintendo switch sports you know and then we we just mentioned the stuff that we also played halo infinite not we're in stanley parable um next week we're going to be doing a tier ranking episode for star wars is it because of may the 4th well it's a little after that is it because the obi-wan kenobi tv show well it's a little bit before. Is it because of the Obi-Wan Kenobi TV show?

Well, it's a little bit before that. We want to make sure that you have Star Wars all month long. Much like Christmas. There's just not enough of it. We want to take Star Wars from a day-long holiday to a month-long observation of this cultural... How are we going to narrow this down? That's a lot of Star Wars games.

No, we'll just do every one. This will not be a bracket. We're not going to pick the best. We're going to rank. We're going to do a tier list. Tier list. It's a lot of Star Wars games. No, we'll just do every one. This will not be a bracket. We're not going to pick the best. We're going to rank. We're going to do tier lists. It's going to be fun. That's it. Take us home, Justin. Thank you so much for listening to the besties. We hope you've enjoyed yourself.

And 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!