The Besties - Smashing the Gooey Guys of Warhammer 40K: Darktide with Ron Funches

Episode Date: December 9, 2022

This week, we're joined by beloved Besties guest host Ron Funches as we discuss the gory extravaganza called Warhammer 40K: Darktide. Is Left 4 Dead still fun when it's in space and there's religion and cyberskulls and stuff? Let's find out!Also discussed: Elden Ring, OlliOlli World, Astronite, Need for Speed Unbound, Marvel Snap, Evil West, WCW Matches from 1991-1992. 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!

do you ron do you all just do you just play theater games non-stop like if i was in the business if i was in the industry i would just be playing like zip zap zap and all kind of like freeze and all those classic sort of theater games that you would get together and play your cool like a cast party for joseph and the amazing technicolor dreamcoat is it just like that like all the time um for some of the theater nerds for sure especially the musical theater nerds that are in hollywood they're just a bunch of real dorks running around um doing games and just going back and forth singing their favorite uh show tunes back at each other it's um it's real cute and then sometimes if it's too early in the day on set, it's very annoying.

Are there like levels of like nerd? Like, are there like zip zap zap people? But then they're like, oh, I'm a Sanford Meisner person. Like, you know, like your hair is brown just over and over again. Who is getting their shit kicked out of them? Yeah. Is it me? Yeah, it's always gonna be you.

You know that. I mean, I know nobody's getting beat up. Everybody's an adult. There might be, there's some eye rolling. Is the eye rolling the worst you could do? You really took it to your own personal history yeah i mean i'm the one doing the eye rolling yes for sure yeah um but also people roll their eyes at me i'm a stand-up comedy nerd so we all have our things our crosses to bear mine is my deep religious streak as evidence

by my use of metaphor. Yours is his actual cross. My name's 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 Ross Froschig, and I know the best game of the week. We usually, like, then do a little bit of preamble.

But I feel like, Ron, you have been on the show enough times that you should just do your own. You should do your intro. I know my best game of the week. My name is Ron Funches, and I think it's a little egotistical to assume that I know what the best game of the week is. I know what's good for me, and i can present it to you ron are you implying that we can't precisely determine what is the best and worst for every single person on the planet objectively because that's sort of the whole premise of the podcast wrong i when i said go ahead and introduce i didn't mean like unravel unschool the whole conceit of the podcast it does

make me glad we didn't go with the original title, which is We Know You Better Than You Know You. Yeah. I think it's a lofty goal. I appreciate it. But yeah, that's what I do. I undo people's whole universes as soon as I come on to things. I mean, you should just avoid me.

We come to expect it. This is the besties show we talk about the latest and greatest in home interactive inter-game it's a video game club and just by listening you my friend are a member. That's the best I've done that. That's the best I have.

I'm proud of you. I really liked it. I really followed in the footsteps of my forebears on that one uh this week we're joined by ron funch's frequent guest on the show and we're going to be talking about warhammer 40 000 the 40 000th warhammer game that they also gave the subtitle dark tide now Chris Plant, if people haven't played the first 39,999 Warhammer games, can you sort of give a basic lay of the land of what we're talking about here? This is different than a lot of them.

This isn't a real-time strategy game. This isn't a tabletop game. It's a lot like Left 4 Dead with a little splash of Destiny. If you played Warhammer 40,000 Vermintide, which is actually the 40,000 000th game and this is a sequel to the 40 000th game they basically got final fantasy 13 2 situation exactly they got to 40 000 and they're like we can't do better than this you know it's a nice round number uh we're gonna talk

more about dark tide which is please christ what we will call the game for the rest of this episode right after this. I didn't play Vermintide. And so I don't know if I'm the best person. Yeah, I never dipped into it. I have a doubt. I own it. It's just one of my shameful backlog games. So I don't know if I'm the best person to start this discussion. But I will say that Darktide is a fun and good game.

Well, let me, before we do that that ron noted nerd that you are i think we're all nerds but certainly you are also a nerd wow do you have any connection to warhammer as a franchise like we know you know what's his you know freaking gerald gerald went out there and made a huge stink about how much he loves warhammer what about you what are you talking about he's talking about superman when i yeah went out there and made a huge stink about how much he loves Warhammer. What about you? What are you talking about? He's talking about Superman. Yeah, Superman loves Warhammer.

Okay. I did not know that. To me, it's almost the opposite. Warhammer, I've been aware of it, but it's almost like when I'd see Sam's Club or Great Value on a two liter of soda, you know? Where I'm like, okay, this is like the off-brand of a different game that I would play. So what is the on-brand?

Well, for this game, for Darktide, it would be like you guys said, Left 4 Dead. Oh, yeah, yeah. In particular, I feel this game has a lot of, reminds me a lot of Remnant from the Ashes and how heavy it feels. And the enemy aggressiveness and how, just the difficulty spikes that it has. I really enjoyed Remnant from the Ashes. Yeah, I like that game a lot. I will say the enemies are very aggressive in this game.

It really put me off. The enemies will come at you so hot and heavy. I feel like Warhammer for me, Dungeons & Dragons, when I was in high school and thought I was too cool for anything, Dungeons & Dragons was the thing where I was like, yeah, I play video games. I play EverQuest nonstop, but at least i'm not playing dungeons and dragons like a real like a real nerd would but then obviously i do that professionally now but warhammer is still like that next echelon that i can look up and be like i can't like that yeah it's like before i

play i have to paint these things. What is going on? That seems like a lot of work. It also, this game started with so much preamble and like, you have to like pick your, I don't know what planet you were born on and, and how you were rate, whether your parents were supportive or not.

And there's all sorts of like mythos names for like cybernetic ninja space priest. Yeah. And I have no idea. I'm sure there are people that are like very jazzed about picking a background for the I don't know what the hell they're talking about. Yeah, it's a lot. 12-step character creation process that could, like, the words it was using seemed like fake words someone would come up with if they tried to describe the Warhammer franchise without having played it. So, we're dunking on Warhammer, but I do want to, I want to give them a little bit of love because it doesn't feel like they snuck up on all of us in terms of just making good things? Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, you know, like, I agree. I have no special love for this. Few game titles have, like, a smell to them. Warhammer does. Yeah. What is that smell? Oh, man. I don't.

Rusky? Yeah. Ron, can you describe it? I it i know it smells like the inside of a jack-in-the-box exactly what time of day is it oh it's late it's late it's late you still got this so you so in some ways it's good you smell a little bit of the milkshake you're like oh i smell the tacos frying. But then you're also like, a baby took a shit here. Like six hours ago.

Yeah, but they released like just four games for Warhammer 40k just this year. And that's not getting into like the other Warhammer games. They're just wildly productive in terms of like how much stuff to get out anyway this one i want to talk about vermentide really quick vermentide left for dead is the obvious comparison but a lot more melee and this feels like somewhere in between vermentide which is like i guess kind of like high dark fantasy and um the future world where you're obviously going to have a lot more guns so you can play a class like the monk class which i took that is very very melee heavy or you can play just kind of like a soldier or you can play as a wizard who makes people's heads pop

um there's there's a little bit more variety not to say there isn't permanent time but i i felt it here more. You left out my favorite class, the one I... Oh, big deal. I tried all the classes. The only one I liked is the Ogryn Skullbreaker, I think is what it's called. Sure. They may not be that...

You gotta understand, in Warhammer, everything's got skulls in it, and they are being shattered and broken. And the grimdark sort of aesthetic of this game is like and i from what i understand like warhammer originated a lot of that stuff it could not do less for me um but the augur and skull breaker is about eight times the size of the other classes that you can play as and uh is is just a just like a bull in a china shop. Only all the china is filled with brain meat and stuff like that.

It's a lot of fun, but like Russ sort of suggested, there is a much heavier, almost games as service RPG element to Darktide as opposed to a Left 4 Dead. I guess Back 4 Blood might be a better comparison since it weaved some of that stuff. It didn't really have a lot.

Oh, it did have classes, right? It had, yes. And it had like the cards that you could, you know, collect to sort of have your own. There are builds in this game that are determined by like the weapons you take in and the unique like blessings that those weapons have on them

and curios and perks. And there's a lot of ways to make your character your own. Ron, where do you normally gravitate towards like class-wise? Do you go like class canon or? Well, I went with the wizard who could pop people's heads off.

That's what I did too. Because I thought that would be so fun and it sounded like a good thing and it was basically like you're a cybernetic ninja, you know, and I thought that was real fun. However, I found that the enemies particularly, like,

there's always such a big group and they tend to move at you in such a, like, straight line that the ability to pop people's heads off seemed very rare for me to actually be able to use. Also, you get very sleepy when you pop heads off. Makes sense. You can't do

it too many times. He's like Grogu. He wants to pass out after a couple times. Yeah. So I ended up mostly just sticking to the melee and trying to upgrade my guns as quick as possible. One thing that I'm always going to try to point out and enjoy is that I really like the character creation in the game

besides how obtuse it is. Yeah. And the fact that I didn't understand what my choices were until a little bit after I'd already made them. what my choices were until a little bit after I'd already made them. But I always love a game that allows me to have more than two black hairstyles. If you got anything more than an afro and cornrows, I've got to say, give you props. And that game has some of the best hair overall. But definitely, as far as black hair and different curls and patterns it's killing it and

i appreciate that yeah the the aesthetic character creation stuff is great the like choose your i was a muck harvester until the great conscription of the good news is like all of those decisions that you make have like virtually no bearing on the game itself it's just like the dialogue that will come out at first okay does it come later i i don't know i just the game is big enough that i i would not be so positive i i don't know i could be wrong i could be wrong i could be wrong so far i've i've played up to like level i think i'm like 12 or something like that uh it it is it is largely flavor-based but we were the the rpg stuff i will say and this is like my one big complaint about the game i love running around a big group of four people and just just decimating every you know uh kind of zombie-esque

fascist goblin fascist goblin that stands in my way um that that that part is like firing on all cylinders the rpg stuff is like way too slow for me like the uh missions in this game last about a half hour i would say on on average at minimum for me yeah yeah your your mileage may vary they are big anytime you go into a mission, it is a big undertaking. And the mission design is great. You're doing lots of different kinds of stuff. Sometimes you're running from place to place, scanning for different viruses or whatever. or whatever uh there's like huge bosses and mini bosses and uh you know the equivalent of like the special zombies in in left for dead um all that stuff is really great but then when you finish a

mission it's like okay here's the points that you get towards the next rank up and a lot of the time it's going to take you a few missions to do a rank up and for at least the beginning of the game like that's how you are unlocking your new weapon classes and uh stuff like that there's also like plenty of currencies for you to collect and spend in the sort of like hub world but uh but i don't i don't really play games so much these days that require like a huge time commitment in big chunks and this game does require that of you and to finish a mission and not like really get anything cool uh to to speak of out of it is uh it was pretty disappointing basically every time that it that it happened um well i'd say even more so and i agree with you just because i'm

usually pretty busy and i find myself mostly headed towards quick bursts i i've been playing a lot of um you know game boy games recently because i can put them up and put them down and get a little fun and and move on um and for this game for every like you said every level to be at least a half hour so i found to be my biggest issue with the game yeah i wish that there was more variety in that that they could that some of the missions were quicker 10 minute 15 minute missions especially in the beginning to kind of on rep you onto the game um. Because I love some of the things that they do. I think that some other games can take stylistically how they present information from the loading screen

and going into the mission where you and your team are on that tram and they're basically giving you a rundown of what you're going to be doing on that level. And I thought that was really immersive and I enjoyed that part of the game like you said playing for a half hour and getting not enough to level up was um disappointing and even more disappointing is sometimes if you play for 25 minutes with three people in a rando and then you die right before the end of the mission and you're like oh my god i wasted 25 minutes

to not get even get through it or or even worse this happened to me uh i think just once but boy howdy did it suck the moon out of the sky uh i i got a like a hard crash uh like right before the boss fight of a mission and that i i don't i don't I think I put the game down for a couple of days after that because that's like if you're if you're going to ask that much of a player, you got to give them something for it. And at the very least, like not crash. I let them finish the thing. It was that that was really frustrating. Technically speaking, I've had some issues with this game uh like in terms of i i forget what i have like a 2080 ti or so i forget the exact uh graphics card

i have but it's like it's fine to run basically anything else this game does not run great whenever there's lots of uh like enemies swarming me the frame rate dips are pretty pretty dramatic i would say and unfortunately there's almost always lots and lots and lots of enemies coming at you so it was a pretty consistent problem for me i don't know if you guys had the same experience yes i did as well i mean i my graphics card is a little bit newer than yours but it's definitely pushing it to the point where my computer sounded like a fucking gen engine yeah um we're hitting like the point with

graphics card they're like uh iPhones right like once you're behind two generations it's like somebody flips a switch just to make sure that you upgrade it feels like but it's weird you can like you can still like you know I know people have figured out a way to run this on Steam Deck and it runs at 30 frames per second but like like you can still like you know i i know people have figured out a way to run this on steam deck

and it runs at 30 frames per second but like you can still run it it looks okay like you have to lower the settings but i don't know i just think 4k is overrated so like fucking run stuff 800p who cares i get that that's that's fair but also like everything else like i've been replaying elven ring and that game is fucking gigantic and it runs like a dream and looks amazing like this it's it's a it must be an optimization issue dark trance not on console right it's only pc i think is that right i'm pretty sure which if oh no it's on it's on xbox X. That's basically it. No excuse. Oh, no, no, never mind.

The port is not out yet. So that would explain why there's some bad optimization. I just have to stay to my end, though. I didn't run into any technical issues. What do you got running over there? I have a 3080. Yeah, that'll do it. That'll do it.

But, yeah, I don't know. Mine is, yeah, not quite there quite there but close i want to offer a counterpoint i want to talk about a positive thing here all this is true then the music gets really loud and you get surrounded by things and you start just blasting them and like none of what y'all are talking about matters in that moment none of it none of it matters it's maybe it's probably my favorite game soundtrack of the year and i would also say i don't know that i've ever heard a game soundtrack like it before it is the dopest like uh synth synth wave slash like monastic choral chant music uh and every time it is uh it is very well sort of like orchestrated to the action of

of each mission uh it is a genuine treat every time it comes on which is great because like for me the feel of this game is you know when it's running good uh is like the best thing about it and the best thing about this this genre those moments in in a in a left for dead where you and your teammates are just like up against the wall and having to dig your way out of it uh this game does that really well and it does it to a phenomenal soundtrack um i don't know who made it i don't know who did the yeah i'm not sure ron you you're a fan of left for dead right and how do you think this compare what is your like how do you think this compares to left 4 dead um well i mean to me left 4 dead itself is just like

a snapshot in time right it was like right at the perfect time of the zombie wave it was fast it was um visceral and so it's like you go back and even play it now and you're like okay i remember that you see the bones of how good it is but you're like it doesn't hit quite the same as yeah sure it but um so i just say this is a lot heavier than left for dead it um just the movement speed to me is a you know tab is i mean a lot slower if anything if it's like where call of duty is at one speed and then there's a more technical shooter this would be like a i think like a technical left for dead because you do need a lot of teamwork like a rainbow six so much yeah exact great you, because I was searching. Have a seat.

And I just found that you needed a lot of teamwork, a lot of communication, which you did in Left 4 Dead, but I'm a bit of a lone wolf sometimes in these games. I get a little impatient, and you get punished tremendously in this game if you do that. Yeah.

You have to be... You really have to play this game the way the game wants you to play it uh i think that's right but before we wrap uh the composer is uh jesper kid who did a game called amok in the 90s that i love that is like a weird sci-fi met game but i guess more recognizable mdk2 messiah the original hit man and the original Assassin's Creed. So quite a CV. Yeah. Pretty,

pretty experienced. Yeah. Wow. Um, I, I, I, I,

I'm a little disappointed in this one because a lot of people are talking about it. And a lot of people are, I think pretty bullish on it. It is. I think if the progression hooks were stronger i would be and and more sort of like rewarding i would be willing to put in the the time required to like really get into it um but i i don't know i feel like a game a game that is trying to be a like kind of games of servicey thing that needs to be a pretty like

damn good sales pitch for me to like really want to buy into that these days and i don't know that this game has it necessarily but as a like sit down and i have a half hour to kill and you know want to tear through a bunch of gooey guys for a half hour with some buddies. I think it scratches that itch really well. I think this is also, we're all old dudes. I like how nasty that sounded. I like how nasty that sounded. I'm not gonna let that go

by. I like that. That's a good time. I think a lot of people who listen to the show who are younger than us and have more time are gonna really like this game. I think the lot of people who listen to the show who are younger than us and have more time are going to really like this game. I think the Deep Rock Galactic crowd will like it. But I do think, yeah, if you do not have time that you can easily commit and commit regularly, I'm probably not. I also want to say one thing because I went through the Steam reviews and not always the best idea.

one thing because i went through the steam reviews and i was not always the best idea but in this case a lot of hardcore vermintide and vermintide 2 people that were very down on this game because they feel like a lot of the features that were in vermintide 2 have been stripped out and this game while they're promising that they'll come in the future adds a lot more monetization hooks where you have to like have to spend real money to buy pants, cosmetic stuff. I love that. So people were a little grumpy about that. So it's worth mentioning.

Real pants, money, real transactions. I think that's the future of video games. Yeah, you do. I think this game has a weird area that it lives in then, right? Because I think it's too niche into um the property doesn't speak to like you're just casual consumer yeah like for me and my friends it's been like usually a choice between hey do we want to play a little bit of dark tide right now or do we want to play a little bit of Darktide right now, or do we want to play Call of Duty right now? And because Modern Warfare 2 is a good one this year,

we tend to end up playing Modern Warfare or going into the DMZ because they're both ones on Game Pass, and DMZ is free. So we just end up doing that because it's quicker. We can drop out. It doesn't feel like if we don't make it through the end that we didn't waste our time. And I think if you are a big fan of this series, it sounds like some people are upset about the things that they stripped out of it. So it's a little bit weird. But Under Our Knees, it's a great, well-built game.

Very enjoyable. But I would classify this as a game for people without jobs if you don't got a job you need to escape your life for hours on end you want to get

away for at least a half hour this a game for you going through a divorce you need to smash some people in the face. In 60 minutes plus. This is a game for you. Ron, how are you not doing game ads? You're missing out.

Yeah. You'd be crushing it. I can see a lot of like divorced 20-year-olds who are here. Yes, yes. Great. This is me uh we're gonna we're gonna uh talk more about more video games uh here in just a second so don't touch that dial it's got jam on it ron it's it's always such a pleasure to have you on the show. We are ramping up to our, our goatee special.

Got some big plans on that. You, you probably won't be there for that unless one of us is on vacation, which like, I hope the, they would have told the other three at this point, if that were the case, would you mind?

I could make accidents happen. Oh no. The ultimate heel turn. Will you share with us, will you give us the gift of some of your goatee picks for 2022? Oh, I'd love to. And thank you so much because I used to go on like Giant Bomb and stuff before all those things. And then I get to write articles about my favorite games of the year and i love doing it and then i haven't gotten a chance to do it in a couple years so normally by this time i have a big note list and everything but together and i don't

so i have to kind of go off the top of my head um so i'm going to start with the most obvious and then think about what i remembered and what i loved and played this year um so two things come off the top of my head of course is elden ring um which i think was you know just so eye-opening and wonderful for everyone except did you do the full 200 hour like just no destroy your life elden ring i tried i thought i was going to you know there a good part of me, and then there was a point where I was like, ooh, this is getting real hard, and now they're throwing multiple giants at me at once, and I'm not going to make it. But I still just, if there's, and I've heard them talking about bringing in more of the full overworld co-op,

and I think that could bring me back to it. Oh, my God. If they do that, I am so in. That'd be amazing be me yeah because i just need somebody to carry me through the game yeah i'd love that that would be the best if i got a guided tour through that beautiful world i would love it um it's a great game for you know everybody but the horizon i feel so bad for the people who make the horizon games because every time they make a game, another game in that same genre comes out and just reshapes the whole

genre and they're just left with their dinosaur robot bones in their hands. Yeah, Breath of the Wild came out the first one and now Elden Ring, like right alongside. The two best open world games maybe of all time.

It's hard to beat that, yeah. It's so dope because, I mean, it took me maybe a good year to go back and play the first Horizon because of how good Breath of the Wild was. And then I went to play Horizon and tried to climb a mountain straight up like I could in Zelda, and I couldn't. And I was like, oh, no way. You're like, maybe if I make the right kind of spaghetti, it'll give me the climbing strength I need.

Oh, you can't make spaghetti in this game. What's the point? Two out of ten. I haven't even played the – I played like five minutes of the new one, but this is about my games of the year. So that's the obvious one. And then a personal pick for me is Olly Olly World. I really enjoyed that game this year.

I love a great skating game. Again, like I said, I love good pick-up-and-play games. When I got my Steam Deck, it was a great first game to put on that. Then I love Black Hairstyles. Like I said before, that game is full of just every type of representation. And, man, I love when AA companies or these smaller companies can do some of the things that these big AAA companies for some reason can't figure out. Yeah. It's also great if you've played the other Olly Olly games or the other – not Team 7.

That's the worms. Roll 7. Roll 7. Roll 7. or the other what not team seven that's the worms roll seven roll seven if you played their other games it's really cool to see like how stuff has evolved like how their their shit has evolved to culminate in ollie ollie world that is i feel like a sleeper hit for for the year that i'm i wish more people would have checked out oh they're on the way up i really enjoyed roller drum too i thought it was like a little bit light on content but um it's just to me it's showing that like they got some ambition over

there i think they're gonna do some really good things were there any other i want to ask because you mentioned the steam deck were there any surprise steam deck addictions besides ali ali world that's a good question that you've been burning through uh row legacy 2 oh yeah i love it man i think that was the first game i put on my scene deck and i would just i was like i can play this game in bed and on the toilet this is amazing i love it such a great game um and then nba 2k11 uh where i have been rewriting history. I have the greatest Chicago Bulls lineup ever assembled. We got a starting five consistent of Stephen Curry. Two years in, people don't even know how good he is.

The announcer on the Bulls calls him Stephen. We got LeBron James. We got Taj Gibson. We got Ben Wallace. We got defense on our team. We got Taj Gibson. We got Ben Wallace. We got defense on our team. And then we got Ray Allen. He's mentoring this young Stephen Curry. And it's just really fun for me to go back and go,

oh, I remember that player. I remember this player. And then the emulation on on the steam deck is so good it looks almost like a it's a ps2 game it looks like a 360 game um so every night before bed i find myself playing one or two games of nba 2k11 was 2k11 like a notably beloved entry yeah it was the bulls one when they added the Chicago Bulls challenges from George Orton. Yeah. Anything else that you...

I do want to ask, well, if there's any other goatee, like Dark Horse options, but I also had a question about 2023 and what you're looking forward to. Oh, Starfield, of course. I'm really excited about that. It seems like next year it's gonna be really good oh zelda the new uh breath of the wild i really want to play i want to i want to put the first one on my steam deck so i could play through it again um oh if we want

to talk about like my dark horse game of the year i don't feel like this is a true game of the year but right under for me i really fell in love for a little bit with cult of the lamb oh yeah yeah i just my just a big mix of a lot of things i love i love the zelda like dungeon the action and then i enjoyed the animal crossing style town building and then i enjoyed the ritualistic sacrifice forcing people to marry me that i named after my best friends it really hit me on every level that i enjoyed and i'd love to see a sequel for that did you struggle with the final boss or am i just bad at video games for cult of the lamb yeah i didn't make it to the end i just started building building my cult out. I really just started falling in love with cult building and decorating and stopped doing the dungeon crawling after a while.

That is kind of how cults work. So maybe you had the more true experience. You get it and you get a little distracted. They started making me look up cults. I grew up in Oregon, and they had the Osho code over there, the Rodney's season. I was like, I'm going to watch this Netflix documentary. And then you were like, they got some great ideas, actually. This game has opened my eyes.

These guys are on to something. There are no AKs in Cult of the Lamb, as far as I'm aware, so they can't really guard the compound. The only great idea I thought was like man if i was a um a weird billionaire or just a fashion guy i'd probably be like let's let's relaunch this as a fashion company these pink outfits that they all wear these are kind of hot let's just like relaunch this as a like boom you is you know wear these clothes it makes you feel like you're at a drugged out orgy you know sure 100 uh i think it is time for honorable mentions yeah fresh what

what else have you been playing okay i played a little game this is a good we're talking about steam deck games this is a good steam deck game it's called astronaut it is a good Steam Deck game. It's called Astronite. It is a, surprise, surprise, Metroidvania, which is my favorite subgenre in gaming. And it is basically a throwback to, like, Metroid 1, like, even before Super Metroid. The, like, graphics are really simple and basic, and you can really only, like, fire either up or straight ahead. There's no like diagonal firing in this. And I don't know. There's something like very just throwback. It kind of reminded me of, what was that called? Gato Roboto. Oh, sure. So like in that vibe.

So if you're looking for like a light, relatively short, I think it was like five or six hours, like not long game. Yeah, I like found it really charming it definitely difficult at times there's some like really tricky platforming challenges but i've been hankering for new metroidvanias and there have not been a ton um so it's been a nice little staple on my steam deck nice uh we're to talk about it on Besties, or sorry, Resties in a few days. But Need for Speed Unbound. Oh, how is it?

They made a good Need for Speed game. That's all I need to hear. Yeah, it's Criterion. And, you know, the great racing game developer best known for Burnout Paradise. I mean, the whole Burnout series. And Need for Speed Hot Pursuit, the one from, I don't know, probably 10 years ago at this point. But this is, I mean, it's very Burnout Paradise. Like, very, very Burnout Paradise.

It is not as open as Forza Horizon or where those sorts of games have gone more recently. That said, it feels just really good to have an arcade racer um yeah you know kind of in the vein of blur almost wow um yeah that's a that's a uh i haven't heard that name mentioned in these parts for or midnight club would be another comparison but yeah it's pretty cool it kind of looks like it has big uh like need for speed underground energy which was maybe the most. I think the most Need for Speed I ever played was Need for Speed Underground for PSP or PS Vita,

one of those PS consoles. Oh, man. But this is the first game from Criterion in ages. Yes. They've been a support developer for a long time. Which is such a waste for the amount of talent that was on that team well then they get folded into like ghost games or something there was some other yeah that was like a fusion did some shit yeah i think they were making like racing segments and like battlefield games and a lot of their talent like leadership left to go form their own

studio it's a whole thing needless to say whoever is still there knows how to make video games which rules i'm really happy about it i love the art style yeah i do have so much of the uh you know that spider-man style uh that they put in it and and particularly i appreciate it because my son is a big racing game fan and a big in particular need for speed series fan so no matter whether it's good bad or trash i had to buy it and so for him to actually play it for more than a half hour is really a good victory for me and i'm i'm gonna start playing it i think but because i i love me the burnout and burnout paradise burnout uh takakedown is one of my favorite games. Oh, yeah.

I love that developer, so I'm glad to hear that. Was that the fourth? Was Takedown the one that followed? No, Burnout 3 Takedown. What was 4? 4 had like a weird subtitle. That one was great, too. I have restarted my second run of Elden Ring.

Oh, my God. I had a train trip last Friday to Philadelphia and needed something to play. And I was like, you know what? It's time. And it is pretty cool how much that game has changed. I played through it pretty quickly and feverishly when it first came out.

And now there's like there's more sort of stuff to do they have balanced the game out they just launched a patch like yesterday yeah that adds like these different coliseum modes which like pvp has never been my thing and from soft games um but it's cool that they can i think you can do 3v3 like giant battles that's really sick that's really cool but there's something about going back and playing it now that there is like way more sort of institutional knowledge about things like builds and secrets and all kinds of when i played the game the first time i basically made like the cheesiest sort of magic build there's like a build that you could do where

you drink a certain potion then use a certain spell and you can one-shot bosses and i leaned on that a lot and probably robbed myself of some of that like challenge and reward uh and now there's you know a lot of a lot of different builds that you can go for i'm going with a a dragon-based build that is really, really, really cool and has me playing the game in a completely different way. That game beats ass. Nobody else needs me to tell them that. And Marvel Snap.

Check it out. You haven't heard of it. Marvel Snap. Also, new season just launched yesterday, Silver Surfer season. I'm going to try and get that Infinite variant up in the season pass uh i pretty much exclusively play an infinite deck these have you checked that one

out yet ron have you played marvel oh i'll be snapping you know i'll be snapping i can't wait till i can snap with my friends because that's who i want to destroy and defeat yeah and make them retreat i'm sorry the rhyme was right there that was good uh but yeah ron is there anything else you're playing right now and or watching it doesn't have to be a video game it can be a thing you're watching it's up to you just watching a lot of wrestling from 91 and 92 wcw super brawls but we don't need to really get into that uh but playing uh there's this game that i think if you're a fan of like we talked about if you if you got a job if you if you don't got much time if you need just some instant gratification there's this game called evil west that i've been oh yeah enjoying

it just the ps2 style hack and slash it's like if they took uh devil may cry and then just gave it the prettiest graphics of today and then it was also all about vampires it's you know like devil may cry and this with red dead redemption because they're cowboys and i love uh the cheesy voice acting that we don't really get as much anymore we usually either get good voice acting very good voice acting or just bad we don't get this like cheesy on the noils as much anymore it reminds me of like the first gears of war in that way or like uh resident evil before they went back and re-recorded the lines and stuff and so i really like that game a lot it's like my good uh veg out after work or if i'm stressed out and just like keep moving forward head towards the shiny thing and then the uh action

is very just intense and enjoyable is that a steam deck joint that you're playing or is it i think it's on i could put it on my steam deck it's honestly I'm playing on Steam but I don't know if I play it on my deck at all I feel like it would definitely run it feels like a game you're describing a Playstation 2 game but it is pretty it looks nice

they used to make like 100 of these a year I feel like in the Xbox 360 era you just drown in these things I forgot we could talk about things that we've watched. I wanted to give a special shout out to Spirited

on the Apple TV platform. Oh, I haven't watched that yet. Man, it's been a while since I feel like a new Christmas movie has joined the canon. And man,

it is fucking great. It's a musical. It's like a Scrooge. Yeah, it's a Christmas Carol. It's sort of aboutge or like yeah it's a christmas carol it's sort of about the logistics of what goes into a christmas carol style haunt of a bad person uh it's got will ferrell and ryan reynolds and uh the music is exceptional it's from the i think the writers of uh oh man what's the sad, Dear Evan Hansen. Okay, good, I'm glad I could pull that.

Yeah, they've written a bunch of stuff. But yeah, it's really, really, really, really great. It's one of those movies that in the first five minutes, basically with the first opening number, I was like, oh, this is a great Christmas movie that I'm going to watch routinely every holiday season. It really, really gets you fired up. Yeah, it's great.

I can't recommend it enough. I love hearing that. And also, I wish for me personally, mentally, that I could separate myself because half the time you said that, I was like, oh man, that sounds so great. And then you started really talking about how good it was. And I was like, how come I didn't get,

I didn't even hear about getting an audition for this here's the thing though ron you're already getting that apple money because you're a regular on loot which is great and got picked up for a second season but you're fantastic in that show i love it it's it's very light and like a great office comedy um and uh it is time for plugs oh that wasn't even time for plugs i actually know i know you and the segue has been made and i want to hear plugs ron is howard on loot i'll just start right there i am howard and he's great he has i love the costumes they put you in it's awesome oh. Oh, thank you. I like it. You know one thing I really love about that is that when you watch the show,

like everybody's pretty dressed up or businessy. Yeah. And then I get to come and just like wear my actual clothes. Or the fucking giant Goku shirt. Like I love that. It really makes me so happy. Sometimes I get jealous. I'm like, ooh, Joel's wearing his designer suit.

But I'm like, oh, my God, yeah, for 12 hours. So I'm like, go get out of here. He's got a hoodie and a shirt. It's great. Yeah, it's the best. And I love it. I get to work with Maya Rudolph and Nat Faxon and all these cool people and Joel. And they're all nervous.

I mean, oh, I can relate it to this podcast because i went in there and i was very nervous and i was like oh i'm gonna work with maya rudolph i'm gonna freak out i gotta tell her how much i love her before i can even work with her you know and these people who got emmy nominations and michaela from from pose and so i was a little intimidated and i come in i'm a little nerd i got my nintendo switch and stuff and um and then we're all sitting on a break and i look over and mckayla's got her switch out playing pokemon and joel's got his switch out playing pokemon and i'm like oh this is a cool job that is cool games are not just for us, you know, indoor kids.

Would you say they've come a long way since Pac-Man? I wouldn't say that necessarily. Like, I still feel like there's room to grow. Sure. Ron, where else can people find you? He's doing so much stuff. I know, but there should be more things. Keep it going.

Sure. Harley Quinn, HBO Max. We just finished the third season. He's King Shark. King Shark. We got a fourth season coming soon, so look out for that. I'm in a show coming out I'm really excited about next year on Nickelodeon uh called rock paper scissors it's me and thomas lennon from reno 911 and carlos alraki who from reno 911 and also rocco from rocco's modern life

and we played three roommates rock paper and scissors is very funny very silly uh it's got a lot of great talent like melissa via senor and ben cedero and eddie peppertone so a lot of comedic yes okay you get what i'm putting on yeah that's awesome yeah you get what i'm saying it's gonna be oh my gosh is this the new wee bear bears is that is that what you guys are going for i would never try to compare to a wee bear bear. Are we just trying to do ourselves? But I think it's really funny. What does Andy Papatone, who does he play in this show? Oh, you got to find out.

Oh, I am so excited. I'm going to force my child to learn to love this show immediately. Yeah, and that's the market they're going for for the kids to enjoy but also for a bunch of parents to be like what i like what there's some real funny funny jokes in it and then i'm in a movie coming out uh in february called 80 for brady which is about tom brady and it's got lily tomlin and rita moreno and uh jane fonda and me and guy frieri i watched the trailer that only movie looks hilarious it is so fun and silly um i had such a blast working with those women and true you know obviously legends and they were so cool and

nice to me um it's so funny because you go online and obviously how online is and you see these people be like, this movie looks like it sucks. I'm like, how could you watch this silly little trailer and get mad, you know? And like, just a bunch of- This is like the perfect, I know they're maybe designing it

for like an older demographic. I would get so blazed and just like go to the theater and have a good time. Like that is that kind of movie for me. Well, yeah, that's what you get too. demographic i would get so blazed and just like go to the theater and have a good time like that is that kind of movie for me well yeah that's what you get too is that like that's one of the reasons i attracted to me and i was like oh this is just like one of the movies they make you go see like this is like this guy like if you don't like comedy there's tom brady and sports and all the stuff and if you do like comedy there's like willie tomlin legends there's legends of comedy in this they hired up i mean it's cameos i don't even you

know i just want to get a couple but like there were i was so surprised how many funny people they hire for that movie and let us just like improvise and have a lot of fun and i mean i'm gonna go see it and i don't go see all my stuff so i'm excited about it awesome um i want to thank you ron for all that and thank you for joining us oh it's been a total delight i wanted to thank the following people for writing reviews for the besties on apple podcasts we've got ezra kize is how I'm going to pronounce Iza Kize is how I'm going to pronounce it I have no idea Boy or Boy but it was just your lack of confidence I think

yeah I should have just leaned into it but we can't start holding that against you now please don't Cbradio3252 and CuteCatCollector thank you for writing reviews for the besties on Apple Podcasts. Did you think boy or boy? Did I think boy or boy?

If not, boy or boy. Sure. And here's stuff that we talked about this week. We talked about a lot of Warhammer 40k Darktide. We also talked about Astronite, Need for Speed Unbound, Elden Ring, Marvel Snap,

Spirited on Apple TV+, Evil West, and WCW matches from 1991 to 1992. That is functionally useless, I feel, as a recommendation to it. Y'all, if you want to follow the action of this episode of The Besties, go watch every wrestling match from 1990 matches ron also has a podcast about wrestling that's right it's probably a better sort of it's called one fall it's on spotify right it's on spotify spotify live for two more weeks and then that whole platform is apparently going oh we've been there i I've been there before, too. I don't, I'm like, ooh, free, okay.

You go out on your end, right? We call that having a quibby. We call that having a quibby. Getting that quibby thing off. We call that a quick robbery. Thank you so much for listening to the besties. Please join us again next. What is next week?

What are we doing? Goatee. Oh my God. It's part one. Does it really? Wow. Okay. And just a reminder,

if Justin is not here, Ron killed Justin and replaced him. So there should be no doubt. Yeah. I'll see you next week. We've got, we got some plans for the Goatee that I'm very excited about. I think it's going to be

a fun conversation. Maybe even an unexpected one. But you'll just have to find out what that means next week on the Besties. Because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games? Besties!