The Besties - Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order

Episode Date: December 6, 2019

The Besties are back! This week they're discussing Respawn's Star Wars game, Jedi: Fallen Order, and diving into the weird world of deep cut Star Wars lore, from Yaddle to jizz (literally the official term for the genre of music in the cantina scene) . 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!

saddle up your horses we got a trail to blaze well now we spotify is gonna have to pay for that money for that i'm sure they own the steven kris chapman entire catalog are we are we moving bright past the cold open like is that what's happening i felt like we had it so this is the besties show about i feel like if we just keep pounding it forward, Russ, the look of disgust on your face. It's not disgust. I'm just, I'm flashing forward to the future. We're 16 people at Spotify.

Listen to this. And they're like, no, we're just going to, we'll find a way to kill the contract. It's fine. My name is Justin McElroy, and I used to be a gamer. My name is Griffin McElroy, and I'm the original Nintendo man. My name is Chris Plant, and I'm an October baby. My name is Russ. Wait, you're an October baby, too?

Yeah, of course. Two October babies. October baby number two right here, Russ Frustik. The idea, okay, this is the besties. It is ostensibly a show about video games. This week, we're going to discuss a video game. But first, I need to talk about the very important news that decades-long friends russ and chris plan did not know that they shared a birth month in hindsight now i remember uh yeah i i 100 knew and i feel wrecked it's kind of coming back to me

now now now i think about october 15th i want to say 19 19 no keep it going what's fucked up is one of the teens you're both wearing these tourmaline pendants to represent your birthstone and yet you're not like that wasn't enough of a clue uh this week on the besties we are going to be talking about a new star wars game from respawn uh it is a a character action star wars game i think probably analogous to the the closest kin would be uh star wars the force unleashed one and two starring do you guys remember the name of the lead of that oh god star killer he had like a shaved killer he's very handsome star killer of course was the original last name of luke skywalker and they changed it because it's had anyway

so this is jedi fallen order it is a game that i have not seen described anywhere without mashing up other the other games that it is attempting to emulate. And I will carry on this proud tradition by reducing the work of hundreds. It's convenient because now we, four game critics, can say

shit like it's the Dark Souls of Star Wars games. And in this case, be pretty justified because that is one of the three sort of big umbrellas that they tried to put the game under. It is blending Star Wars and Dark Souls and Uncharted in some of the sort of traversal. Dark Souls, I would say, think more structurally. I mean, the Dark Souls stuff really say think more structurally

I mean it's really the Dark Souls stuff really doesn't extend beyond enemies respawn when you checkpoint and yeah well it's hard it's also like the combat can be hard at times I think you should clarify up top

that as far as blending goes it's probably around Terry Crews blending Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore. It's a mediocre blended. Okay. It's not a great blend of any of these things,

I would say. Let's get it. I want to save the critical analysis until we've established the... What's the story, Justin? I want to know the story. It takes place like five years after the original prequel. The

prequel trilogy. The original three films. Star Wars 1, 2, and 3. Not the original three films. I think you could say the first in the timeline. The prequels trilogy. Five years after the prequels trilogy. So this would be between 3 and four, closer to three, I believe.

Before Rogue One, if that helps to time it out. So the Empire is like really getting their claws into the galaxy and it's all very bad. dad you are sort of a jedi in hiding uh named cal and you are entrusted with a mission to get together like a list of force sensitive uh humanoids i guess or you know force sensitive beings across the galaxy uh i haven't gotten the list yet, so I don't know. There might be dogs on it, is what you're suggesting. This is the end goal of the game, as I understand it, is to get this list of force-sensitive people and basically start

rebuilding the Jedi Order, which has fallen, as we have established. It's like Blues Brothers, essentially, but for Jedi. Yes. Because they're getting the band back together, is what he's saying. Right. Action-wise, you are getting a lot of traversal.

There are a lot of big-scale fights that feel more like an Uncharted game than a Dark Souls or something in that category. And we should clarify, when we say traversal, like, that Uncharted-style traversal, like, you are climbing up the sides of things and jumping between patches of climbable wall and, you know, walking on pipes that you can also drop down from

and jumping from rope to rope and wall running. Yeah, it actually felt more to me, although I appreciate, like, Uncharted does that a lot. You know what it reminded me of was that Prince of Persia game from like 10 years ago where it was just like all wall running, like everywhere you went was like a wall run. It's a little bit more fluid like that.

Yeah, it's a little bit more like free form and less like insert tab A into slot A kind of deal. It's like the Titanfall. I mean, it's Respawn made Titanfall i mean it's respawn made titanfall too and it's that same level of like mobility um force powers you're not expected looking at anything wild i i think i've just gotten the last one it's just like it's just the force powers you would expect you got your push you got your pull you got your slow i haven't gotten lightning or choke or any of the bad boy stuff yet you, the bad powers that only the bad boys are allowed to have.

You know what? Honestly, if the light side Jedi want to start actually competing with the Sith, they need to get some kick-ass powers that only they get. Because right now, if I'm choosing a team and I'm like, they get lightning and choking, what do you all get? And they're like um robes like no thank you I have a question force unleashed the game that you compared the this to up yes right you at some point have enough force power to down a star destroyer is that yes you're correct you

getting that game the action of that game as memory, and it's been a decade, is very much about, like, waves of enemies. Like, how do you take out, like, groups of big crowds of enemies using your force powers? And, okay, so for me, the reason this is a very competent effort, I would say. It is very, there's a lot of... it's the best one of these it's better than those force unleashed games i feel pretty like qualified to say like oh really i don't know that okay those were fun and narrative narrative wise like i think we keep making the uncharted story wise i think story wise it's better It's an interesting story. It's well-acted. The performances are actually really well-captured, I thought, like some decent performances in the story.

There's a couple of folks that travel along with you on your quest, and they're well-rendered and well-performed, I think. But for me, I think it comes down to a couple of overarching problems. The more I played it, I was like, this is all very competently done, except for the parts that wicked aren't. There's some technical stuff that is just wild that I don't want to get into, but

it's like some stuff where I had to set the controller down and let the environment rebuild around me because there was nowhere to go. It was like when they loaded the jump program in matrix yes there's a couple places like that for sure but okay so the problem is that i i the reason i i played it and like it's got a lot of elements i like dark souls i like uncharted okay um i like star wars like why isn't this clicking it's also doing metroidvania light

sort of stuff in a way that a Batman Arkham series might do. It does something with Metroidvania. Metroidvania is one of my favorite genres ever. I love those games and it does one thing that I've never really seen in a Metroidvania game that I thought was brilliant. By which, Russ means by that is a game that gates

content by not giving you all the items that you need to do a thing. Yeah, like Super Metroid is an example, or like Symphony of the Night, if you've ever played that. Like you can't get past a wall because you don't have a bomb power. Or like a double jump. Get the bomb power and suddenly you can take a shortcut. So in this game, usually like one of the mechanics in Metroidvanias is that you're lost

and you just sort of stumble around until you find a place that you haven't been yet. And in this, they added, there's like a map. You can see like a 3D map. And the map actually has these like rainbow doors that show you, hey, this is a path you have not been to yet. You should check this out. And just in terms of like knowing places to go,

I thought it was really smart just from a design side. And it also does a thing which i russ it's funny you i don't know if you actually would get this with you being colorblind i don't know if they have a setting for your people but they have green doors that mean you haven't been through them and that you have the ability that you need to go through them red doors mean you haven't gone through them but you don't have the ability yet so don't worry about it which is actually very helpful yeah i didn't check the settings to see if there was colorblind settings but i did notice in combat two colors were a little

bit of a problem for me um so my problem with this this game i i think what there's some uh there's some stuff that sort of i don't know there's a solve for. And I think the first problem is this. I don't think that the Souls games, which are very much about the drudgery, a sort of pleasant drudgery of repetition and learning enemy and learning enemy patterns and like uh grinding through in those games you're basically like a reanimated corpse you know nothing person uh and that thematically makes a lot of sense i don't think the the jedi or a star wars game where you're playing a jedi is all about like fluidity and being like right and on point

and like the most powerful thing in the room and it's not even close. I'm going to devil's advocate a little bit, even though I mostly agree with you. I think in the story, so you start out as a scrapper who is like breaking down Star Destroyers over a Sarlacc pit because I guess that's how hey osha can you can you get on this one osha they're doing incredibly dangerous work over a

fucking sarlacc pit y'all that's unnecessary it's a bad place to work and i think you could argue that the idea is oh you you haven't been much of a jedi in a long time you are still recalling your abilities uh and that's why you have to fail and maybe there's like a nice arc between you the character regaining their jedi powers and you learning how to like be a wizard in this game i get that i mean like that if they were i don't think they quite deliver on that if they were delivering on that like that would be interesting right but it's not designed for i mean the the i mean the jedi thing is the one is the first thing that i don't think works very well with like a souls the idea that you would like traverse these repeatedly is actually not

as designed like it's not designed for that really like there's not an idea where you would like grind on experience on any of this to try to level up that is not part of it which is like kind of essential in the in the souls thing is this idea that you would grind through an area to um get the resources or levels or whatever you need there's unlockable there's unlockable skills that you can get by grinding out experience but i do not it's not enough you're not gonna get enough like fighting you get nothing from fighting these basic basic dudes and it's also like not that fun to fight the individual guys but moment to moment but the other thing is the traversal that this game has that sort of like uncharted prince persia style traversal is not a good fit for the repetition of a soul structure where it's like okay god you climb

something once and it's barely entertaining like i am not gonna so i'm gonna do it again because i died at the guy at the top of it i'm just gonna schlep my way over there with like zero skill or anything it's just like yeah mechanically going back up there it's like a huge momentum killer in addition the fact that like the load time was way too long and when you come back when you come back to get through that metro that metroidvania gate you're gonna climb that again because there's no like fast travel between checkpoints on on any of these maps which seems like kind of counterintuitive. Yeah.

And then the moment to moment, the last thing I will just say, the moment to moment combat just feels off. Like it just feels there's like when you first get the lightsaber and people are shooting with blasters and you're just pressing a button to deflect it. It's like, yes, that's good. That kicks ass. They've got that loop, right? That's good. That kicks ass. They've got that loop, right? That's fun. And if you deflect right before the bolt gets to you, then you hit it back at them and kill them.

That's fun. But then when you get close enough to a character to actually fight them, they have not figured out a fun combat engagement or a way to make that feel enjoyable, especially when you are talking about like a big crowd of dudes, like none of it,

it just doesn't moment to moment work. I have my big thing and Justin sort of, we were talking yesterday and sort of clued me into this. Who lives in these places? These places where the only way to navigate to like your house

is to jump 10 feet in the air to get there and then run across a wall. Like, these do not feel like actual... These are the most video game-ass video game environments on the planet. They're Mario levels, effectively. Like, they don't feel, like, normal. And I get, like, design dictated how the levels needed to look but the problem is it just doesn't feel in the way that like coming off of like god of war the last god of war game like these felt like a village that was taken over by like weird elf people and it it felt legit and here this feels like oh no no that's a video game that's a video game people live here because it's a video game and it just sort of like took me out

of it i think in the same way that um justin talks about the character and the Jedi not being a nice match for the souls idea or design paradigm. I think the Star Wars universe isn't necessarily a good match for those worlds. Because the whole Dark Souls world idea is these like decrepit, kind of like knotted,oluted almost hellscapes and it's yeah people or things live there but it also feels very intentionally warped um where the very first world you go to in this game is i don't know like craggy but also like swamp lands and And I almost got killed by crabs. Have you ever seen a Jedi get killed by crabs? It's weird. It doesn't look like much of anything other than a video game level.

And there's like a, I kind of like a Gila monster, a giant Gila monster, just sitting at one end of the map. I don't really know why. And I was, I was really into the second stage where you actually see i don't know kind of houses but right again it's trying to do that that it's much more focused on the dark souls thing of

okay you navigate a little further and then you open a shortcut and that makes your path back to your campfire or in this thing it's like a meditation save point right a little bit easier um and and that's the entire the architects of this world that's all i thought about was like how can we add really clever shortcuts right everybody else is like can you please add plumbing it's just i i feel like i honest to god feel like this would have been a great if they had just done sort of the uncharted thing which like we need to maybe, I feel like the Souls like descriptor is like pretty codified at this point.

Like when I say Uncharted, I mean like sort of story focused, cut scene focused things with these action set pieces. For example, very early on in this game, there is a train explosion segment and it's like, okay, yep. I see where you guys are going with this you're i wanted nathan drake to just like fall out a window and fall past you and die

and he'd be like what was that guy uh this could have been i feel like a really really and i'm not done with it like it you know maybe it turns around it is i will say getting more fun the more powers i get um which is to say like before i got pushed like it wasn't i wasn't really enjoying it but the the problem for me is like this idea of now you have this new power you can go back to this other world and run all the way do all the traversal stuff you've already done to get to the point where you can open this door and either and i don't know if the loot changes at some point but you can either find a one-third of an upgrade for your health or force or you can find a new fucking lightsaber sleeve.

I got a new cape. Like a new poncho. The ponchos look terrible. I wish that ponchos looked very No, they're very bad dude. It's like a garbage bag. It looks terrible. I want to wear that poncho. So it's like

the Souls sort of game structure I feel like doesn't really work without those progression hooks you also randomly find a double bladed lightsaber at some point which completely changes the combat like that's one time you do it you find a double bladed lightsaber it's actually really smart

the way they've done it it's better for crowd control if you press right on the d-pad it'll just pop the other blade out and then you're fighting with it's real sick but also what i love about that if they had just done the uncharted thing i feel like this game would be would be phenomenal one because they could i think focus on making that stuff work a little bit better i cannot tell you the number of times that i have just like stepped down from a platform onto a pipe and just like actually the game decided that you didn't step onto the pipe you went to the just the right of it and you did fall or hey you tried to jump to that rope fucking darth rope

in this game is like the deadliest enemy that cal has like they could have made that stuff work a little bit better uh but like in terms of pretending to be a jedi like there's some cool shit like the reflecting lightsabers all of the animations for like your lightsaber maneuvers look really good uh and the double bladed lightsaber what i love about it is the animations make it look like you would actually use a double-bladed lightsaber which is just kind of like he doesn't like flip it all around himself because it's two fucking lasers he's super careful like he's doing like a tap dance routine with a cane just kind of like uh i i love it like that stuff's really, really good. Can I take us all to Conspiracy Theory Corner

just really quick? Yeah, please. So I do want to bring up the context in which this game was made. So EA, the publisher who makes this, you know the people who make Madden and Mass Effect, or if they ever make another Mass Effect, they made this big contract with Lucasfilm

to make more Star Wars games. And they made the multiplayer games, which have not had great launches. And then they had another single player game that was going to be kind of open world uncharted. That one got cancelled. And then there was this game. And it seemed

like, hey, this is going to be the big one. Respawn is making it. They made Titanfall, Titanfall game. And it seemed like, hey, this is going to be the big one. Respawn is making it. They made Titanfall, Titanfall 2. And it was, those games were wonderful. They have this game all set. And then Apex Legends comes out. It's a humongous hit. They have to dedicate tons of resources to it.

And suddenly this seems like less of a priority. to it and suddenly this seems like less of a priority and i while playing it i get the sense of like it just feels not prioritized and again like that's in the first level where there's just parts of it where it's like there's no environment in this game um and i'm sure yeah i think but that but by the time about it but by the time Apex had come out, real quick, like, this game, theoretically, I mean, that was in February, this game was, gotta have been pretty well dialed in at that point. Oh yeah, I'm not talking about the design of it. I'm talking about the polish

of it. This is a game that feels like it did not have the extra month or two it needed for some serious TLC. It's, but it's super polished in some regards. Like, it's super... Not in some levels, not at all. Here's what I'll say about the game. I am

enjoying my time with it, despite its sort of structural flaws. I think that the core be a Jedi experience they've crafted is one of my favorite second to the Jedi Knight, Jedi Academy, Jedi Outcast 2, like, the Kyle Katarn sort of series of games. I'm really liking it, like, a lot when I sit down to play with it. But I also have other, like, three big games came out in the last few weeks.

And I'm having a hard time making Star Wars be the one that I like prioritize and spend my time with. Like a hook. Yeah. A lot of people really enjoy this game and I think that a lot of it has to do with the fact that we haven't had a good representation of being a Jedi in a video game for a long time.

And that is intoxicating. If you get it and it's decent, it's not bad. It's just like there's just a lot of weird compromises I feel like that keep it from being something that's really a must a must experience

I think it's pretty good it doesn't get the must besties sticker that we're going to be sending out to you 8 out of 10 stars let's move on yes let's move on. We'll take a quick break and then we'll come back and talk about more Star Wars stuff.

I'm not done talking about Star Wars. I love that crazy world with all the planets and the wars. Some of these aliens, guys, they look pretty wild. We wanted to talk about some of our favorite treasures from the Star Wars universe. Russ, I have already guessed what yours is.

Yeah, I feel like the Star Wars universe is so deep and so in-depth, and I've read all of the novels and all of the backstories, so I know that the most interesting thing in the star wars universe is jizz okay challenging this is what uh so for the midichlorians come from the jizz or how does it work russ tell us now so so you know in the cantina scene the famous cantina scene in episode four where they walk in and han solo is there i think of it as the jizz scene but go on mcclunkey um so the music that they're playing in that cantina scene is not maybe you thought it was like futuristic jazz or something like that in fact according to george lucas it's called jizz that's the genre of music is called jizz and this one's

called jizz is what this kind of music is called. I have a question about this because I think it's really important. When George Lucas was asked this, was he identifying as jizz? He wasn't asked. Did he give an interview around the time the movie came out? Or, more importantly, was this like his final day before the Disney merger? And he was like, yeah. Also, the jazz music is called jizz now.

Bye. Han Solo's real name is Shit Dingus. Bye. That's just how he rolls man. He's been sitting on that for quite a while. That is not a late addition. It's always been jizz.

It's always been jizz. I always call it jizz. The other thing is what sucks. I've always thought of it been jizz. Oh, it's always been jizz. I always called it jizz. The other thing is what sucks. I've always thought of it as jizz. Griffin, what's yours? I am a published Star Wars author, as you all know. Griffin has contributed to the extended universe.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure it was non-canonical. I don't think I get a star in the Star Wars when they make the stars fight. But I wanted to share my favorite little factoid, which is I wrote a story about a Jawa that works on the sand crawlers on Tatooine.

And I was writing it, and in one part of the story, like, it unearths this droid during a sandstorm, you know, just pulls it up from the sand. And so I was writing this segment and talking about how this Jawa named Jot was like digging around in the loam, right? And I wrote the earth beneath his feet, you know, parted or whatever the hell. It was super good writing, but I don't remember it. And so I was very, very nervous to send this story in for edits

because I thought for sure they were going to sort of go through it with a fine tooth comb. And they did. And the wild thing that I learned is they said you can't say the word earth in reference to dirt because they don't have earth. Earth isn't there. They don't have the earth because it's not there. So you can't call it earth. And I was like, if you're going to be granular about that, there's probably a lot of things that are earth words that like i wanted to like in retaliation be like and then the jawas

ate a space hot dog like they wanted they wanted to play a quick game of martian baseball like you can't oh actually you can't say that also star wars uses the metric system i used a measurement of feet and they were like nope it's metric system fucking great i love it alphabet how does that make any sense they have their own alphabet earth doesn't exist but the fucking metric system does deal with it that's how universal the metric system is right uh i wanted to very briefly talk about one of my favorite star wars things and that's star wars games that have non-force users in the lead roles um i've often spoken about how that is comparable to being in a game called save me spider-man where you're trapped under a car and spider-man is swinging around and you hope that spider-man

will come save you right uh but i just wanted to take a moment to honor some of these heroes these non-force users in star wars games that have been getting a lead role in Star Wars games first in Tie Fighter we have Merrick Steele pretty good Merrick Steele pretty good X-Wing Alliance I want to honor the name of Ace Azamene

that is his name is Ace in quotes? is that like a nickname? Nope Ace is his Christian name not Christian they don not christian they don't have jesus they don't have a weatherman situation i have a special special honorary accommodation for kyle katarn well he became a force user right after they made one they were like this sucks all these people have super star wars powers and this single Barry's got a gun. And in the second game, they were like, yeah, he just turned out. He's like trying to move a sandwich with his hand.

And then it did move. So I guess he's Star Wars too, huh? They even renamed them. They named the first one. The second Dark Forces game is called Jedi Knight Dark Forces. The second Dark Forces, the third Dark Forces game is called Jedi Knight Dark Forces. The third Dark Forces game is called Jedi Knight 2, because they don't want you to go back and play that old boring one where he doesn't have superpowers.

Dash Rindor. Raise it up to the heavens, Dash. He's the worst. It would be the worst of the names if it weren't for... Well, okay. Special... That is Shadows of the Empire in Nintendo weren't for well okay special that is shadows of the empire nintendo 64 he's like literally just helping out luke he's basically just like in the background

like like when the i think when the garbage disposal stopped in that one scene dash rendar is the one who beats he beats boba fett's ass at one point which i think helps he loosened the pickle jar the boba fett pickle jar so Luke could finish beating his ass. Yeah, and he steals his jetpack. I mean, that's pretty cool. Speaking of not to go out of order, but Jango Fett did have his own game called Star Wars Bounty Hunter. Oh, yeah. Okay, we'll take that.

I want to talk about the name. I can't picture Dash Rendar at all, but I know he's played by Dax Shepard. It's like basically the same dude in all of these um but anyway the the last one i want to focus on is the lead character of force commander who is literally named bren tantor his name of this boring ass dude in the star wars with no powers is brent tanner hi my name's Brent Antor.

It's Brent. Hey, do you have the Force? Absolutely. Did you not hear my first name? It's Brent. No, I don't have any Force powers. I'm good at logistics. Brent Tantor.

I want to talk about Yaddle. Speaking of taking time bombs that George Lucas left in the Star Wars universe before heading out to, like to open an art museum or whatever he's doing now. Yaddle is Yoda, but it's a lady Yoda. She's on the Jedi Council, I believe, in Phantom Menace until I don't know when the Jedi Council disbands in the prequel series. What's great about Yaddle now is they've been making more and more star wars they don't have the old eu so the way they go about writing scripts so far as i can tell is they look at things that weren't answered in the previous movies and then they answer them like

how did han solo get his name oh he was boarding in a space airplane and he said his last name is solo because he's a passenger of one. His real name is Shit Dingus. Dingus. But now they've run out of things to answer. And then seemingly all at once, everybody who was working on different Star Wars projects was like, I know, Yaddle. But nobody communicated this to each other. So in the video game we just spoke about, there's an entire Yaddle monologue prioritized very early in the game. And now, I mean, I don't know how The Mandalorian ends, but I can only presume it begins before the story with some serious Yaddle love action to produce Yoda Baby.

Yeah, I guess we're – That's how babies are made. I wanted to warn people that we're gonna spoil the mandalorian this comes out like people people gonna know about baby it's kind of a meme he's basically taking over twitter at this point that's true now normally this is where we would uh answer your emails but we haven't gotten any emails yet because we're recording this before the show in a vacuum if you will but uh we are going to be doing our game of the Year stuff pretty soon. So if you have a favorite game of the year,

please email us. It's mail at besties.fan. So you legally have to be a fan to email us. It's right there in the name. Email us your favorite game of the year and let's say one sentence, a one sentence argument as to why it is the best of the best of the year.

Yeah, and next year when we get talking about new games and stuff again we'll be asking you for your thoughts of whatever game that we're talking about that week, sort of book club style. But for now, the one sentence of the goatee will be sufficient. Thank you. You must be a fan

or you'll go to jail. Honorable mentions, guys guys you play anything else we didn't uh that is non-star wars related nothing i can really uh well i mean we're doing episodes on the other games that i'm playing right now um i i've been i've still been dipping into final fantasy 14 i don't know if we're gonna have time to talk about that probably during the goatee stuff if we get to Shadowbringers. But that's been like my workout game because it's pretty mindless, I think. My workout game is Assassin's Creed Odyssey.

I don't know if you all saw the DLC that came out this year, The Rise of Atlantis, where it promised you would get to go to Atlantis. So I had not even started the game, played through the entire game, 70 hours, finally got to Atlantis. It's fine. Turns out the rest of the game is great though. So it's actually three games in one, this DLC. So I thought like, oh great, I've gotten to Atlantis. And it's like, no, actually first you need to need to like I don't know fight in Elysium Fields and I'm like cool did it that was another 10 hours and they're like great great great great

now you need to go to Hades it's gonna be the ugliest environment in the history of Assassin's Creed can you spend like another 5 to 10 there I'm like okay sure so I swim around like a beautiful fish man is that yeah and then and then i get to uh atlantis and they're like welcome to atlantis the first thing you should know about atlantis is don't fight people it's like what i came here to murder

atlantis and they're like no you can't i want to know what mermaids got going on blood wise that's who i am i uh i uh have you know it's a fun little thing i never really got into this series but uh i've been playing that third luigi's mansion on switch oh yeah it's really nice it's just like nice and fun and like kind of um the inverse like it kind of has the inverse of the exact inverse of the game of Star Wars Fallen Order in that Luigi actually sucks shit and is not fun where Jedis are fun and cool

but the game parts of it are also thoughtfully combined to make something that really sings together the idea that like it is just fun to vacuum crap up, so here's a bunch of stuff to vacuum and you can do as much as you want,

but we have thought about how these elements work together is just very nice. It's very pleasant. It doesn't outstay its welcome. Individual levels are genuinely very different. There's big ideas being introduced at a very consistent pace. I just think it's very solid. Yeah.

Maybe we should hold more honorable mentions since we're about to record another episode here in this first block. These first three episodes, by the way, are going to be available, you know, widely, but we should say that this is going to be a spotify exclusive experience so if

you enjoy the besties go head over to spotify and uh check us out over there because that's where the the rest of the episodes are going to go or if this one is at first we have no idea we have no way of knowing there's just sequential right so there's like there's there's some episodes now but that's it the faucet's shut you gotta You gotta come to Spotify and get the next drink. Yeah, so you could probably go, I bet you could find it if you go to besties.fan. I bet if you go to besties.fan, it'll take you right to our Spotify page.

That's my theory. I haven't made that happen yet, but I bet I will. If I know me, I probably hooked that up. Thank you so much for listening to the besties. Thank you to Ian Dorch for our theme music. Thank you to Spotify for making the show happen. And thank you to you for listening. That's going to do it for us for this week,

but until next week for rush, fresh tick, Chris plant, Griffin McElroy, I'm Justin McElroy. And be sure to join us again next week on Besties because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games?

The Besties is a Spotify original podcast in association with Vox Media. The show is edited by Jelani Carter. And our theme song is by Ian Dorsch. Besties!