The Besties - Staying Faithful to Pokemon Shining Pearl and Brilliant Diamond

Episode Date: November 26, 2021

In which we discuss, with equal levels of enthusiasm, the latest remake from the world of Pokémon, and also the franchise as a whole. Then we take a deep dive into the mailbag, and share a blue million honorable mentions! Other games discussed include: Pokémon Snap, Pokémon Unite, Pokémon Let's Go, Pokémon Sword and Shield, Forza Horizon 5, Unsighted, Pony Island, Halo Infinite Multiplayer, Binding of Isaac: Repentance, Minecraft's Magic Kingdom Pack. 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!

Guys, I have a question for you. It's a Thanksgiving question. Okay. It's actually not that unusual. I am curious what your, like, ideal Thanksgiving plate looks like. Mmm. Well, you gotta have an Angus beef hamburger on it. Wait, what?

It's gotta be Angus beef, too. Don Wait, what? Angus beef. It's got to be Angus beef too. Don't come to me with that. But a hamburger? Yes, an Angus beef hamburger. And then a big pile of crinkle cut French fries. Yeah. And stuffing. Griffin insists on only eating Thanksgiving at Fuddruckers.

So that is one thing. Hey, listen, don't knock it till you try it, baby. The Fuddruckers stuffing is just mushed up buns and ketchup packets. And it is good. They call it rucky stuff. I love that rucky stuff. Me too. Turkey.

Sweet potatoes with pecan crust. Not marshmallows. If it's marshmallows throw it in the garbage stuffing obviously a delicious roll and then a dollop of i like a some sort of like mashed parsnips or roast vegetables some sort of thing like that and that's a perfect plate for me for starters and then the next plate, plate two is where things get really nasty. Yeah.

Then it's not about appearances anymore. Then it's about like, what am I going in hard on deep in the paint to like, really take myself to the limit. That's where I'm at. Maybe a Ritz, maybe a bit of Ritz tort on that second round. If I'm feeling spicy,

otherwise I'll save that for after the big game for me Thanksgiving when I think of like Thanksgiving meals the immediate word that jumps to mind is indigestion so I try to opt for like a single piece of dried chicken maybe some water

that's so important oh that's it that's it yeah okay well this is weird to me i mean one because that just sounds awful but two none of you okay i'm being dead serious none of you do pickle surprise okay i have been to a chris plant thanksgiving before this is not a goof or a gag no it's not a goof or a gag it's real it's not a goof or a gag. It's the real deal. I mean, can we talk about the rebrand before we even dive into what that is? Because I think it needs a rebrand.

There is some serious reclaiming of the lexicon here. Tell me about your surprise. No, the whole surprise, I do think this is a thing. I think that we're going to have a lot of people tweeting at us being like, Plant, you did it again. You were right. and everybody else was wrong you know that hashtag plant you were right again yeah did everybody's always bring it out pickle surprises where you take um like a deli

meat usually like you know like a bologna or something like that and then you lay it out flat on the cutting table uh the cutting table the cutting board the cutting surprises you lay it out flat you you smear uh some cream cheese on it like a good helping of cream cheese cover that entire top of that meat with cream cheese and now you're thinking it couldn't possibly get worse than that could it well you gotta add the pickle i was gonna say you lay the pickle in it and then you wrap like you kind of you lay the pickle on one end and then you like wrap it up like a burrito almost right then you uh you you cut it into like bite-sized bites like uh like like it was going

to be given out on halloween and then you put toothpicks in each bite so people can eat it whenever they want throughout so i i do have a question and that is where does the surprise come in because it kind of seems like everything's sort of right there in front of you yeah it sounds like an ingredient i think the surprise is that it's being served to you okay could we maybe and this is by the way the longest intro we've ever done but now i'm invested in pickle surprise sure it could you make it so that there's not a pickle in each one and there's only a pickle in like every one and five. Oh, yeah, I like that. Oh, I like that.

And so then you get like a Bertie Botts experience. It's like a king cake. Right, exactly. Oh, that's good. What if everyone has an additional surprise inside the pickle and it's a little bit of testament? New Testament's been rolled up and you can get a little bit of scripture.

I like that. Ooh, I got Genesis. After you get a little bit of scripture in there, it's like, ooh, Genesis, delicious. The most delicious surprise. Good, did you not. Ooh, Genesis. Delicious. The most delicious. Good. Did you not try one when you came over to our house? Um, well, here's how it went. You said you should really try this.

I remember what happened, yeah. And I said, I don't want that. I don't want to eat that. What Griffin actually said was, oh, my wife is going into labor and I need to leave immediately. Good excuse. That is a good excuse, actually.

A good reason to bail. My name is Justin McElroy, and I know the best game of the week. My name is Griffin McElroy, and I do know the best game of, uh... Yeah. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant, and I played a bunch of video games this week, and I'm excited to tell you about them. Yeah. My name is Russ Froschek, and I was expecting more enthusiasm from Griffin about a Pokemon game.

Yeah, so was Griffin. Yeah. We are going to be talking about the Pokemon Diamond and Silver. Oh, my God. Justin. Pokemon. Pokemon.

Pokemon. Sorry, my head. Throw it to me, buddy. I my god. Justin. Pokemon. Pokemon. Pokemon. Sorry, my head. Throw it to me, buddy. I'm ready for it. Pokemon Diamond and Pearl. Shining Pearl and Brilliant Diamond. That wasn't in the rundown, and obviously, I wasn't going to know it. Here's what it is.

You should have known that. Yeah, yeah. It's fair. What are these games? They are a remake of the 2007, 2007 in America, 2006 in Japan, I believe. Pokemon games, Pokemon Diamond and Pearl for the Nintendo DS. These are the ones that added internet play. So they got those kids online.

The remake is basically the same game in a lot of ways. But, you know, it's got those like like, 3D modern chibi aesthetic visuals. Chibi, for people who are not familiar with the word. How would you describe chibi, Griffin? Big head, cute, little bodies. Yeah, that sounds right. As impossible as it is to believe we will have more to say about this product,

it's going to come right after this brief break. Okay, Griffin? Yeah. Tell me all your thoughts on Mon, after this brief break. Okay, Griffin? Yeah. Tell me all your thoughts on Mon, because I really want to hear them. Yeah. Okay. And I want to eat this apple.

Okay. So just thanks. Yeah, if you can mute definitely that apple foley, I'm begging you. Okay, so Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl. Just rolls right off the tongue. It does not. So we're going to just call them Diamond and Pearl.

And you all have to just use the mind power that you have to focus on the fact that we're not talking about 14-year-old OG versions of these games. But in fact, the ones that came out last week. I think our audience is capable of that yeah yeah when i try it i get chastised yeah i know the apple was definitely present in the cut there it had a little bit too much too much sauce in the mix it was a honey yeah um oh my god russ is he right it was a holy shit pokemon diamond and pearl as uh chris alluded to were the first of the nintendo ds pokemon games uh the nintendo ds was capable of getting on internet in a way that game boy game boy color and game boy advanced never were duh um and they what else did they add to the series i mean they added some some like cute

sort of side questy stuff that every pokemon game kind of tosses into the mix and they added like a hundred pokemon and added like a hundred pokemon i think the final count at the end of gen four which is what uh diamond and pearl and then it's like tertiary follow-up Platinum, you know, had in the roster. And I believe that is what you can collect in these new remakes. They did not add additional Pokemon from every, you know, the many following generations that came after that. One big feature it added was called the Underground, which was like a sort of sub-world that you could dig down into and walk around collecting items and building a secret base and digging in the

walls for, for resources. Um, and, and that was, that was the game. Uh, I want us to do a quick table setter because I had a realization while

playing through this game. And I, I believe we have hinted at the fact that, uh, I did not enjoy it really very much at all, is that this franchise has been around since, what, 96, I believe? I think it was 96, yeah. And it's so funny that they refer to each of the batches of games, right?

Each of the pair of games that release at the same time, and then usually the tertiary follow-up like yellow for gen one or crystal for gen two uh are referred to as generations because i i've realized that because the series has been around for so long and it's had such sort of staying power every every like generation of human beings that play this game have a different jumping on point right so when these games came out i was like starting to hit the point where i just like wasn't really into pokemon games as much anymore uh what do you mean when diamond and pearl came out when diamond and pearl came out uh in 2007 like i was i was 20 years old i was in college

job uh and also like straight up i was 20 years old i was in college job uh and also like straight up i was pretty burnt out on pokemon because i played the shit out of the prior uh you know three generations worth of games yeah i'm just waiting for the moment because you were pretty damn obsessed about the one that came out two years ago so i'm just very curious what happened it has caught me back right i i can talk about sword and shield uh you know later on but like this this was my realization is that there are lots of people i liked diamond and pearl i played it um but i didn't get like super duper into it a lot of the ds generation of games like i just didn't get really into but for younger folks like those are the games where they cut

their teeth right there are lots of people out there who diamond and pearl were their first pokemon game and so receiving what nintendo has called a uh like extremely faithful complete anytime you hear the word super faithful remake of a game that is uh very old it means that there's not gonna be anything new and um that's that should be a big red flag because that is the case with with uh brilliant diamond and shining pearl like there are no pokemon past past gen 4 man i thought you're about to say there's no pokemon i was which is a serious problem for diamond and pearl because diamond and pearl famously had like a really imbalanced roster like there were only a handful of fire type pokemon uh so if you didn't choose the fire type starter like you would kind of be up shit creek you might really

have a fire type pokemon that you could like call your own for for a good long time uh yeah yeah my son and i have been playing it together and he went with uh turtwig and i was like are you sure my man are you sure my dude a few of of the features have been sort of upgraded, right? I think the best thing about the game is that the underground feature, which was Diamond and Pearl's sort of big new thing, has been upgraded into something called the Grand Underground,

which is just enormous now. It has these areas where now you can catch different sets of pokemon underground that you can kind of customize with how you decorate your secret base with like different statues that you find it's a it's a neat system and then you can play it like online with other people and just like get wild up in the underground it fixes a little bit the type stuff because you can like craft a fire type uh you know hideaway that you can go in and you know patch up the holes in your team a little bit more right that's that's to me that is like the the best improvement here um you can

also i would say you can walk diagonal i don't think you could do that in the original it's huge it's so it actually like no joke you used to you know in most of the early pokemon games obviously you just walked in all you know the four directions north south east west whatever that was all you could do being able to move like an actual like character around actually does make a big difference for me like sure comfort of the world it doesn't really change the gameplay that much but it makes it nicer to play i also want to say like no but i mean it is thrilling i remember the first time i walked diagonally that's my dad i also want to say i really like the art style of the overworld i wish it carried over into battles because the battles more or less look like sword and shield

battles like they use the same art but the overworld art is like great it is a perfect kind of modernization of that era but like making it 3d to the point where like it feels very referential without being the exact same like copy sprites it's like a 3d eyes version of what the sprite art was and yeah i think it's great i i don't want to spend a whole bunch of time on this game because it quite literally is just the old game. Right. But slightly better. But there was a question that we had that I think might be more useful for our listeners. Unless anybody has anything that they want to share before you wrap up.

I just wanted to clarify something with Griffin. You weren't super into this one originally. Did you play all of it? Yeah, I beat it. I mean, I am beholden to the franchise. I will say this. I am not going to beat this one originally did you play all of it yeah i beat it i mean i mean i was i'm i am beholden to the franchise i'm i am i will say this i am not gonna beat this one i do not want to play it anymore i i before we hop off the game i like they have done remakes of pokemon games a few times now right all the way back to game boy advance they released fire red and leaf green which were the first two games in the in the whole series that you know got the

game boy advance glow up but they also added like a whole nother like adventure after you finish the game that was not in the original one not to mention let's go pokemon which just came out yeah let's go yeah those games were also another recreation but obviously super different in a way a lot of people didn't like but as a dad of like a young kid who was into Pokemon, was basically the target audience for that. It was different, right? It was wildly different.

My favorite games in the whole series were Pokemon Heart, Gold, and Soul Silver for the DS, which were remakes of Silver and Gold, which are still my favorite ones of all time. They added Pokemon from later generations. They still had like the post game where you went back

and basically played red and blue again with your current team. Even Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire in the 3DS like added a bunch of stuff. It had content from Pokemon Emerald, which was their like tertiary thing. This game doesn't do any of that. And it doesn't include any of the stuff from like Platinum,

which has like, but Platinum was, I think, a much better game than Pearl and Diamond. But there's just none of that stuff in. And the defense against all that stuff is, well, yeah, it's a super faithful recreation, but you can't like,

it's making something faithful to a game that came out like 14 years ago without sort of introducing the, incorporating the stuff that has bettered this franchise since then, and people kind of expect at this point, is just a bad, a bad thing. I think this is what happens when you listen to your most hardcore fans, right? Like, that, I think that's the thing here. I mean, we'll probably mention it when we talk about Pokemon Sword and Shield in a second,

but the very, very hardcore pokemon fans believe that like the series should kind of go back to how it was a long time ago yeah and and here is nintendo doing just that what's like silly about it though is they did that but then like did the chibi aesthetic which is in the 2d game too uh yep more or less yeah more or less but uh is unsurprisingly upsetting you know this hardcore fans i i pokemon fans i the most hardcore ones i have no idea truly what they want it's just like i mean any fan base i just i just covered right like it's it's we're talking about not one conglomerate fan base. At this point, it is several generations of people playing these games all wanting different stuff from them.

And different hardcore generations within each of those. Right. It's incredibly fractured, right? Yeah. So Sword and Shield were certainly flawed games, right? They had their fair share of issues. But they were so, they reinvented a lot of the stuff about the franchise in really bold ways. And it had performance issues, definitely, and some pacing issues, and not all of the stuff they added worked good.

But the stuff that did, I i thought was pretty cool and was enough to keep me i i fucking caught them all right like i was really really into those games in a way that i hadn't been in a in a long time right and i feel the same way about x and y those are the games that really pulled me back in after i kind of fell off on the ds generation pokemon is like the worst franchise they could have done this for because it is the complaint is leveraged against it so much that like it's just the same old shit and in this remake like they they embrace that in a way that is i just couldn't i could not hang with it was so uh not enjoyable to play can i can i just have like 30 seconds because i did play some of this and i don't want that time to just be like wasted when I have to account for it with St. Peter and shit.

My opinion is worth next to nothing unless you're somebody who casually, theoretically enjoys the idea of Pokemon and maybe has kids that would be into Pokemon as well. I much more enjoyed the brief time i spent with sword and shield i thought that was like much more interesting and and this felt like very rote and and kind of boring and like very reminiscent of the limited pokemon i played as a youth if you're looking for a place to like get on board with it i don't feel like this is no yeah so that i would very much start with that gets to the the big question i have for y'all and this is separate from the the listener mail which we'll get to in a minute but we had a question here from william uh and they said i just got my first switch the last nintendo device i owned was the game boy color translucent purple of

course and the last pokemon game i played was gold not sure if i should even bother with the series now what should i do sword and shield diamond and pearl remakes wait for is it called arceus is that right griffin uh i don't know how that okay should i don't i don't i don't know that gentleman yeah and well the the the thing that i i think we can use this as a jumping off point is there are actually a lot of pokemon games both mainline and non-mainline on the switch you know which of these do you y'all recommend who do you think like different what are the kind of different entry points for different types of people so this is i'm gonna guess this is an older person because they owned a gameboy color

and i think for someone that has been out of the loop of pokemon for a very long time this is going to be a weird comment but stick with it i think pokemon snap might be the way to go but the new pokemon snap that they released which they've continued to support like post release with new content stuff like that is like a kind of a great introduction to the world of pokemon in addition to like the new mons that have been added and stuff like that without having like a ton of the very slow buildup cruft that you kind of have to power through to get to the actual game of Pokemon.

Yeah. So I don't know. I am, over time, I've been more and more pro Pokemon Snap than I was at the initial launch. Yeah, but if you want to like, I don't know, it's such a departure. I mean, it's not normal Pokemon.

You're taking photos, so that's worth considering. It is fun, though. It is a fun game, sure. I mean, my two recommendations is if you are a younger person or you have kids and you are looking to introduce them to the thing, you cannot do better than Let's Go Pikachu or let's go Eevee because it like eases in a new player in a way that might sort of put familiar you know players with the franchise to sleep I don't know that I would

have gotten as into those games as I did if I hadn't played through you know literally all of it with uh with Henry but if not, I don't know, man. I mean, Pokemon Sword and Shield definitely adds a lot of stuff on top of the formula, but it is also, in my opinion, like the most enjoyable Pokemon game on the Switch. I wanted to mention one thing while I was playing this. All I can think was like, I think I would maybe like and or love this a lot more if i could just like blaze through so much of the text like i turned off battle animations and i put the speed to like highest on the text speed and like blazing through all that stuff like i just want to like

get through battles quickly and level up pokemon stuff like that i don't you know i'm not in it for the story that said i realize these are games are not for me so i i get why that that is in there but it is at this point like i've read the phrase do you want to switch your pokemon because a new pokemon is coming out about 10 000 times in my life at this point let me just i can just let me do it yeah let me just do it i'm'm going to throw in one other game here. Pokemon Unite. It's like their riff on MOBAs, but you can dunk in it. And Pokemon that dunk, that's a pretty good case to get back into Pokemon.

I think the only thing that I would say people should avoid, if you are just coming back to Pokemon, Pokken Tournament I don't think's going to be your entry point mystery dungeon there are better versions of this game that are not pokemon on the switch frankly um i i don't know if any of you any of you played quest or cafe remix i i think uh i'm big into cafe but that's again because of my my four-year-old um i just want to say if you have if you have a 3ds you have access to every pokemon game that came out up to the switch right because you can get virtual console versions of red and blue you can play heart gold soul silver so you can play ds games on a 3ds you got the remakes of ruby and

sapphire you you uh yeah you can play you know the original ds diamond and pearl like you can play everything on that you can play black two and white two which are bonkers games that are kind of standouts for me uh so yeah just keep that in mind i also you you win out on the best pokemon games of gold and silver so you know there's a little feather in your cap there okay well uh chris did you want to hit the the was there any other questions about pokemon specifically you want to address and i think we should we should get ready for that back half because we're going to open up that listener mailbag and it's going to be a blast yes okay all right well let's go and

we'll be right back right after this i i have i've prepared the listener mailbag it is deep today before we start just want to say hey everybody who listens to the show thanks it's you know the day after thanksgiving and i hope that you had a nice time uh even though the holidays can sometimes be tough but we appreciate you uh because we really would not do the show at all if not for you i mean that wouldn't make it would not um we have empirical evidence to that to that fact that we would not do this we try we try desperately not to make this show um okay here we go let's start with a question from shelby uh i feel like i've gotten very stuck in my ways as far as game genres are concerned and i want to expand my horizons what was the

last game you played and enjoyed from a genre you're not normally into uh this was hades for me uh shelby says turns out roguelikes can be good, actually. I will answer this and say mine was probably Final Fantasy VII Remake. As people who listen to the show know, I am very not pro JRPGs, largely speaking. And that totally grabbed me. I thought it was phenomenal. And I totally love that game. This may not count, but I've gotten really, really into Sudoku lately. There's so many good Sudoku games out there, guys.

Yeah, man. Tell me all about them. You want to hear all about the Sudokus that I like? Tell me. There's a game called Good Sudoku. Wait, are you joking or no? No, I'm not joking. Why would I fucking joke about something like this?

Okay. I didn't realize there were that many variants on Sudoku, which tends to be. I mean, Good Sudoku is a Zach Gage game. And it's really good and you should get it. I've also been playing a game called Sumaddle, S-U-M-A-D-D-L-E, on iOS. And it's kind of a picross sudoku well not

really picross it's it's it's like sudoku with different rules and i'm very into that yeah i find that my tastes are going in a sort of a grandpa direction yeah more of a grandpa direction i'm very into uh it was that fucking Clubhouse Games Switch version that turned me into a grandpa, because I was like, you know what? I fucking love backgammon. Griffin, how do you feel about hot water and lemon? I mean, if the rains are coming on,

and you feel that familiar ache, it helps soothe your humors. You know, I would recommend for these uh this is why i like games that sort of like fuse two genres that are otherwise sort of like non-related because it seems to give you sort of like a nice high level you know surface version of it while giving you something else that you may be more familiar with. I talked about Moonlighter last week, which is sort of like that where it's like an action roguelike type thing. This mix with like a shop simulator, which is not something I would normally play along the lines of what Griffin just mentioned though.

I mentioned this game years ago, but I continue to return to it pretty frequently on my iPhone and that's coverage with grandpa. turn to it pretty frequently on my iPhone and that's cribbage with grandpa. It's literally like you build your own grandpa and you name your grandpa and you give him a personality and a look and a background. And then he teaches you how to play cribbage. And then you like play cribbage with your grandpa and he like cheers you on when you do a good job unless

you make a mean grandpa unless you make a mean cruel grandpa no he's a nice grandpa and he will like give you hints if you get stuck and um he keeps tally of like who's won and who's lost and stuff um and he if you don't play for a while he he falls asleep. It's great. It's great. It's called Kermage's Grandpa. And I love that like approachable, like assume you know nothing about a game and like here's how we're going to like slowly ease you into it. I really dig that.

Yeah, I think I've just started ignoring genres this year after realizing that I have no idea what I actually like because I thought I liked Metroidvanias, but now I don't know. Wait, no. Before this year, you thought you i liked metroidvanias but now i don't i don't know wait no before this year you thought you didn't like metroidvanias no i knew i didn't like metroid but i thought i liked metroidvanias and now you don't what a wild distinction i know i know it doesn't are you telling me that metroid dread turned which you didn't the franchise you thought you didn't like turned you off of the genre which you thought no no it was actually the opposite i really liked metroid dread but it wasn't it

didn't click with me like the way it does with everybody else where i was like i admire this game like this is a really good game and a genre maybe that i guess isn't actually much for me on the flip side i didn't think i like uh like i don't know pc type of games but then this year i didn't i don't like deck building games you know i don't like where i have to think but then inscription in wildermyth and flight simulator have been like some of my favorite stuff of the past couple years so i don't know maybe i just like certain games and i i genre you don't subscribe to labels just yeah what i'm trying to say is that speaking of while i'm being a pretentious i have a question here from matt uh since this is a video

game book club what are your favorite books based on or about video no i'm adding this because i want to shout out one book that is actually good and then we can move on it's a good i swear it's a good book and i think justin will like this. Justin, have you seen The Making of Prince of Persia by Jordan Mechner? No. Is it a book? Yeah, he wrote a book. The creator of the original Prince of Persia wrote a book and is his – basically his diary from while he was making it. So, like, tons of images and, like, moment-to-moment recap,, like here's how I am making this game.

It's really, really, really cool. And if you are someone who's interested in like, I don't know, just the very human and kind of mundane process of making a game, it is such a cool read. game it is such a cool read and avoids like i have plenty of you know very academic books that fresh does not want me to talk about in my bookshelf this is not one of them um it's also not one of those kind of you know coffee table books which are fun but are like here's 50 games yet you should play um it really threads the needle on that sweet spot so all kidding aside i do actually have a recommendation for this as well you sometimes i read books spoiler alert um if you have any interest whatsoever in making games yourself you're about to say the exact book might i suggest reading um press reset which is jason schreier's latest book No book that I have read has convinced me more

that I made the right decision in not going into game development. I found it- Promise me he does not financially benefit for this purchase. That's the one thing I need to know that I'm not lining Jason Schreier's pockets. I am assured that he only makes a very small percentage of every purchase. Oh, okay, good. Yeah, it basically goes into the backstory of a variety of different development cycles

for games like Bioshock Infinite and a number of other titles that Curt Schilling Studio, what was that game, Reckonings? Oh, yeah. Oh, shit. It's fantastic. It's fantastic. It's fantastic. If you haven't read it,

nobody does Jason Schreier like Jason Schreier does. This is a whole Jason Schreier-ass book. So it's very good. And again, if you or maybe someone in your life has a dream of making video games, force them to read this book and then see how they feel after that.

I want to recommend uh boss fight books has a bunch of really great uh sort of short paperbacks about a lot of them are like you know folks in the industry who are fans of a certain game who are like just writing pretty big investigative books about it like the creation of bible adventures for the nes um but the one i'd recommend is spelunky which is written by derrick you uh and it's all about the creation of that game it is a quick very fun read uh and if you are familiar with the game at all it like really gets into detail about how the like world creating like randomizer stuff works and i think there's other books that are sort of autobiographical like that

but um yeah i i loved the the spelunky book i i can't choose so i'm gonna do real quick three uh like two are sort of foundational uh well they're all foundational i guess if you haven't read them uh chris kohler's power up oh yeah um is like kind of essential reading i feel like at this kind of hard to find um Like at this point, yeah, harder to find. Raph Koster's Theory of Fun is like really is the book that I think sort of like shaped the way that I thought about games and fun more than like literally anything else I've ever encountered. And Masters of Doom, the book about id software and the creation of those games um is fantastic the audiobook read by will will wean is is very excellent too but those are like the three that i that sort of like instantly pop into my head yeah i can't believe masters of doom hasn't been turned into a tv show

yet i know halt and catch fire is i thought masters do i feel like it got yeah i thought it must have didn't get optioned it? It's so primed for it. Anyway, I want to keep us moving. A question from Brianna. I just got a Series S. It's my first time ever owning an Xbox. So do you have any recommendations from Game Pass or the store for someone new to the ecosystem?

Let's just stick on Game Pass with this because... Yeah, I talked about it in a previous episode, but Unpacking is tremendous. Really, really good. I also really like, if you like racing games, Lonely Mountains Downhill is also fantastic. It's just like a bike game, but played from an isometric perspective.

Really cool lo-fi graphics, like low-poly style style really like those two i mean so much of what we've talked about in this show from like carrion to i mean oh yeah carry gobs gobs of stuff donut uh county which is not my favorite game but a game i know a lot of people loved and it's a good just entry point but also It's also really great for kids, by the way. Yeah, for sure. My seven-year-old's a successful. Also, Dragon Quest XI S, Echoes of an Elusive Age, Definitive Edition, is on Game Pass.

Don't you laugh? That game beats ass. Yeah. That's a really good game. Yeah. I mean, there's just so much on here. Banjo-Tooie. Banjo-Tooie.

Banjo-Tooie. Yeah, I think that's... Blink the fucking time sweeper. Banjo-Tooie. Banjo-Tooie. Banjo-Tooie. Yeah, I think that's the fucking time sweeper. Sweep that time up, Blinks. You go ahead, boy. Oh. Oh. Sorry, hold on, wait. Did Blinks get cancelled?

Yeah, that's why we're all curiously silent during your great Blinks riff. It wasn't a riff. It was a full-throated endorsement of Blinks. The man can do no wrong unless he's Blinks. He's a cat, actually. Okay, guys, this has gotten a little serious over here on my end.

As the Googling has continued here, Masters of Doom, like, had a cast. There was a Polygon story about it in 2019 written by Michael McWhorter. Like, it has a cast. There was a Polygon story about it in 2019 written by Michael McWhorter. Like, it has a cast. What happened to this thing, guys? Maybe it was like a COVID delay? Did it not go into shooting? I thought it was like an FX thing.

I don't know. I don't have a video game website. Why don't you motherfuckers find out? Don't find out for free. It's a holiday. Okay, one last question. This one's from Andrew. If you could only play one game console for the rest of your life,

but you had access to that console's entire game library, which console would you pick? PC. Oh. Yeah, PC feels like cheating. PC's not a console. I feel like that's cheating. PC's cheating.

Not a console. Okay, do we recognize virtual libraries? Like the Wii's virtual console. Or backwards virtual libraries? Like the Wii's virtual console. Or backwards compatible libraries? That seems like cheating. It does a little bit. Okay, yeah. Just stuff that was released purposely.

Because I can play every... Every Xbox game ever released or something. Well, it puts the original PS3 at an unfair advantage, right? Were you tempted to say the original PS3 at an unfair advantage, right? Were you tempted to say the original PS3? No, but you can play all the PS2 and PS1 games. But I don't care as much about those games. Okay, let's make it to games that were released, they were either designed for or ported purposely to that console.

Okay. I mean, no joke, it might be Switch. I think it's Switch. For me. It's got so much shit on it that has so many of those ports and so many good-ass games that I feel like it could sufficiently

keep me entertained for the rest of my days. And it's portable, so we're in the apocalypse, I'm assuming, and this is the only console I can get a hold of. This is our Twilight Zone Burgess Meredith. Yeah, I'm locked I'm assuming, and this is the only console I can get a hold of. This is our Twilight Zone Burgess Meredith.

Yeah, I'm locked in a safe, and this is all I have. So, perfect. Piece of cake. And then my glasses break, and it's the dreck. Oh, yeah. My glasses. I think Switch is almost cheating. It's not cheating. It's almost cheating because the idea of the Switch,

where I feel like every developer is, hey, you know what? We have this game lying around that's been on PC for a while. Let's just bring it to Switch because people want it there because it's portable. Speaking of which, Death's Door just came out. I might give that one a second pass. Oh, you did it really? On Switch.

Yep. And it runs okay? I mean, I assume so. I hope. I haven't played it, but it's like... It's the Switch. It's gotten pretty good reviews i assume it's just like okay i'm excited about that yeah i i think that's like the the

kind of easy answer i mean dreamcast has a special place in my heart but i would i have to be honest with myself that i would run out of that there was only like 15 games that ever came out on dreamcast they're like a gajillion and you could play them all on your dreamcast even when the dreamcast is out because piracy was rampant for that system. That is true, yeah. I do want to mention real quick, just this recently, to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Xbox, Xbox released a museum website thing

where you could go back and look at your stats. And it's fascinating to me to see the four-year period from when the Switch launched to basically when the Series X launched, where I more or less did not touch my Xbox for that entire period of time. And then it spikes again once the Series X came out and I started playing Game Pass way more. Very interesting. Okay, is it time for honorable mentions? Yeah. Okay.

Justin, do you have anything that you want to share with us? Have you been picking anything else? You recommended the... Unsighted? Unsighted. That's really good. I've really been enjoying that one a lot, actually, if I have free time when I'm not fucking obsessed with Pokemon.

I really have been enjoying that one a lot actually if i have free time when i'm not fucking obsessed with pokemon um i really have been enjoying that uh it's sort of god i feel like we need to talk about that more at length to give it its due but it's like a isometric sort of zelda ish with like better like not better but like more uh complex combat with like the weapon combinations and stuff. And then there's also some like really interesting narrative hook of everyone in the game is an automaton who has a limited number of hours left to live because sort of like this world's power source has been depleted and you're trying to like save everybody like before they can die,

it's pretty wild. I've been enjoying the limited amount of that. I think we will be blowing it out a bit more in Resties because Planet and I both played a ton. I think we'll be bringing that into the Game of the Year

conversation, Justin, so I think we'll all be discussing into the game of the year conversation, Justin. So I think we'll all be discussing it more. Also, I got into after Inscription sort of lit up my senses in the words of John Denver. I have been moving on to some of the other games from Daniel. Oh, yeah. Games just started on Pony Island, which like, I'll say this, if you like inscription, you're gonna like Pony Island.

It's pushing a lot of the same buttons and it's not as polished, I think, as inscription, but like, it's pretty fun. And it's just a game about like a Pony Island, right? It's just a game about a a pony island, right? It's just a game about a pony island. Cool. Yes. There's nothing about the devil in it at all.

Guaranteed. The devil is not even in it much. That's an official stamp of approval. Just in seal quality, limited amounts of the devil. I wanted to ask the room, has anyone else been playing more of forza horizon 5 it's so good i i gotta be real at justin and plant i'm sorry uh griffin and justin i know y'all are like racing games meh i get it i am with you uh we were talking about genres that i don't

normally get into this is another one this is the first racing game that I've gotten heavily into since Burnout Paradise came out like 8 fucking years ago it just is very arcadey and constantly has like stuff that I'm unlocking and it's insanely gorgeous

and I don't know I'm like very smitten by it in a way that I haven't been with a racing game in a very long time so i would strongly strongly recommend it and it's available for everyone on game pass it's kind of like the biggest xbox game ever in terms of player count because it's on game pass um so it's pretty wild and it's more like open world mario kart or like open world game where you just happen to be a car. Yeah, I think that's fair.

And you can kind of just play, like if you like street racing, you could just do street racing. If you like just doing big jumps, you could just do big jumps. It's very sort of tailored to your preference. Rush, Burnout Paradise came out 13 years ago. Oh my God, I'm fucking a million years old.

Excuse me, can you pan back to me for a second can you turn the camera back with me halo i know that halo i know oh you're you're talking about halo you've been playing the new halo god guys it's so good yeah hey it's so good and i the unlockables in it are really interesting because they have challenges for you to do, which are kind of motivating. You're talking about Halo Infinite multiplayer, just to be really clear, right? Yeah, sure.

Yeah, thank you, yes. There's challenges that are like, you know, blow up an enemy warthog, or, you know, kill five people with a assault rifle, whatever. And those are like, you earn experience points which you can use to do like cosmetics um but the that you don't get rewards for like winning yeah and the only reason to keep playing is just because get this it's very fun yeah i know you don't have to just be unlocking stuff all the time. I don't even care if I unlock stuff because I enjoyed the game.

And can I say, I don't know what it is, but I'm doing a good job. Oh, wow. That's very, it's very surreal for me. And I know it's just because it's early or whatever. But like yesterday I had 16 kills and two deaths. Oh my gosh. I was like the number one score. It was fantastic.

And no, there weren't bots in there. Shut up. No, it was. It's really, really. I'm I'm shocked. Honestly, shocked. I think it's because it's free to play. So the audience is like way bigger than it normally would be.

And also, yeah, that it's early. But also they've been like making matchmaking systems for halo games for 20 years at this point so at this point it's kind of dialed in so you should be playing against people that more or less are near your skill level yeah the balance on it feels so good i played uh yesterday because there's an event they just launched with like you can unlock like samurai armor or whatever, but the event is, there's a new mode called Fiesta where every time you die,

it's just death match. But every time you die, you get thrown a totally random loadout. And I was blown away by how many weapons are in this game. There are like 16 different weapons. There's like the, you know, normal,

like long range laser gun. There's like a spike shooter thing that exploits people. There's like an SMG electricity gun. I was just like, wow, there's another weapon I have never seen before. And I think the mode is very smart because it just lets you dick around and it's not a big deal if you screw up. It also like so many of the weapons in in this game feel especially like the alien weapons and it's hard to contextualize those right because we haven't played the single player thing yet so i don't i don't know exactly where these weapons are from but like so many of them

feel like oh you are you sure you want to give me this like it feels like i'm probably gonna be too powerful with this like just launching rows of plasma at people that like sweep through a room and blow everyone apart uh and a lot of the games feel like a lot of the weapons yeah like that which is very very neat uh and it's got a grappling hook i mean fuck i'm very excited for the campaign griffin griffin have you played it i haven't i haven't dipped into it yet no oh my god it's great it's genuinely bringing me back to like the last time I truly enjoyed Halo, which would probably be Halo 3.

It's on Steam as well, if you don't want to do Windows Store. Oh, and I don't. It is novel. The idea of playing a shooter without the intent of collecting a hundred, you know, etheric spirals to move on to the next quest step that would allow

me to unlock like iteratively better you know cape or something like that is uh it does seem fun to me it does seem like the kind of thing that once i do play it and enjoy it i would not go back to the other thing maybe and the other thing is like a lot of almost all the matches i've played have been like close it's really it's really exciting to be playing a lot like four on four and you feel like my contribution like matters like i'm definitely like it it really is it i i could put us over the top by by playing a little smarter it's very cool um i love that russ filled in my part for me which was helpful because i've been talking to russ about this game and i don't know i guess maybe it's the new dlc for it or maybe i'm just

at the right time in my life to enjoy the game but i have gotten wildly deep into binding of isaac repentance and maybe you can comment like i know the dlc added more stuff but it also like balanced a bunch of yeah so so first of all i want to say like i've never been more overjoyed that someone finally is playing this game because i've been obsessed with this game for 10 years at this point maybe it's 20 knowing how little i know what time is but um yeah uh one of the things i think the reason part of the reason that you've been able to get into it is when Repentance came out, which is the newest DLC, but you can also buy it as like a full pack of all the games together if you've never played it. They basically rebalanced the onboarding systems. punishing to sort of get familiar with the systems and how the game works and they rebalanced it to make it more welcoming they also added like stuff like true co-op so you can play with someone else that makes the game much easier if you want to just like learn the systems but um yeah it just

came out it came out on pc earlier this year and now it's on uh consoles as well switch and xbox and playstation man uh griffin i'm very curious like what is it about binding of isaac that sort of clicks for you as a game and maybe just like briefly describe i mean it's a gosh it is a rogue uh it's it's mostly a rogue light but you do like by completing certain like challenges uh you unlock new items that show up in the pool which is a very like limited way of kind of uh continuing the progression also like there are certain like uh check checkpoints that when you like pass them like you defeat the final boss enough times the game changes and the paths that are available to you change yeah the characters that are available to

you change just for people that don't understand the game at all just to be clear it's a top-down action like a smash tv or like a zelda but with like randomized rpg mechanics layered on top of yes so the game constantly changes your character gets different abilities depending on the random items that you get throughout the game right um so like i don't know i whenever i played this game in the past i would just play it and get some random shit and then maybe i'd beat the boss maybe i didn't i never really noticed any change or anything like that but uh you know maybe it's the rebalancing maybe it's the fact that russ pointed me towards an app on the phone that you have that you can turn on your camera and like point it at any item in the game and it'll tell you like what it is and what it

does because a lot of the items are pretty opaque but i don't even use that as much anymore because i've learned like what stuff i like what stuff to avoid yeah um and i've learned how to like use the characters better i've learned a lot of the boss strategies. And now I can, you know, finish a run like most of the time, which is super rewarding. There's a bunch of different challenges that have like special rules or like special builds that you have to play as that are really like super novel and fun.

And I'm like making headway into it. I still have so far to go right like there's still so many like levels i haven't reached right exactly uh but i i don't know i'm just having a i'm having a blast with it yeah i i can't put it down the thing for me that i find just super interesting about this is binding of isaac appears to be an action game like when you would first pick it up it looks like an action game it's really like almost a strategy slash puzzle game with like a little bit of card game stuff thrown in to the point where you're trying to like stay what is the term pace when you're playing like a hearthstone or something tempo yeah tempo you're trying to stay ahead of the

tempo so you're trying to maximize every piece of resource that you have that you pick up so for example if you get a key uh and you have five coins and you walk into a room and one there's two locked doors you should always go to the shop instead of the item door because the shop will have more keys to buy and also more options and it like opens options up for you and your brain sort of gets to this point where you're seeing the matrix a little bit where where you understand, oh, if I do this and this and this, I will get more resources than I would if I did it in a different order. And that part of it like scratches a very specific ADD part of my brain that I have a very tough time explaining to people, but I'm glad someone else is enjoying it.

No, yeah. It's like there are, i just played through a run that i finished and had a very like slow offensive build which is great for destroying bosses but like i kept taking so much damage anytime i went into a room with like a bunch of enemies in it uh and so i started to hunt down uh these card pickups that are like one-time use items and one of them lets you jump straight to the boss which i would never do otherwise because you're skipping like a whole floor's worth of upgrades but that was the strategy that worked for me for that run uh it's it's it's it is fantastic i would encourage anybody who i think the dlc is like 20 bucks so it's not something to scoff at but it's i don't

know it it finally made the game click for me and now i i feel like i, like Russ said, like a decade's worth of this enormous fucking game to dive into now. Yeah, my play clock is probably around 400 hours of that game, to give you an idea, and I'm nowhere near finishing the DLC. One last thing also, I downloaded the Minecraft Magic Kingdom pack. Oh gosh.

Oh my God, how did I not talk about that? Did you play it? Oh. Oh, gosh. Oh, my God. How did I not talk about that? Did you play it? Oh, my God, yes. Yeah, I mostly downloaded it to play with Henry because he's been to Magic Kingdom a few times. And it's fucking bonkers. It's staggering.

Do you guys know about this? Yes, I've heard about it. I haven't tried it. It's staggering. Honestly, like, Russ, have you been to Walt Disney haven't tried it it's staggering honestly like rest have you been to walt disney world yeah it's been probably 15 years okay so i'm a little bit of a disney i'm aware yeah okay i don't you don't get into it um so this thing is they have rebuilt to celebrate the 50th anniversary of um 50 years of magic for the anniversary of Walt's incredible dream.

Walt Disney World like in partnership with Minecraft released a fully realized version of the Magic Kingdom

in the game. Is that Disney World or is that something else? That's Disney. It's one of the parks at Disney World. Magic Kingdom is one of the parks

at Disney World. Right. So Magic Kingdom was the first one before it's like tomorrow it's it's tomorrowland correct me if i'm wrong but it's basically like a condensed like uh disneyland like most of disneyland's features are are magic kingdom disneyland's like an expanded magic king like disneyland has in in the heads of a casual disney fan yeah the magic kingdom is most similar to disneyland but it's actually way more complicated and we will not go into that yeah absolutely yeah if you guys want to do a new podcast about disney let me know um god russ jesus we get it you love universal studios um but this is like the magic kingdom it's the whole thing and as somebody who's like kind of a fanatic about this stuff like

it was really wild going into like not just like there are many rides that you can like ride you can ride them right you can get onto haunted mansion and it's like there with one one to one yeah it's it's yeah you can go into the fucking enchanted tiki room and they will do this song with all the birds and stuff it's the stretching room is in the haunted mansion like which doesn't mean anything if you're not kind of a somebody who's been a lot but like the yeah exactly no see that's the thing about it it was an elevator at disneyland because they needed to make the ride subterranean. But the effect was so good that at Disney World, the ceiling goes up.

Wow. And you're not actually going down because you're staying. Okay. But like restaurants, right? I went to like my favorite restaurants and could find the bathroom. Wow. Like that is the level of detail like not a joke like i saw i went to the table at uh skipper canteen that i like ate at last time it is

a wild un like it's this is a serious question if you dig down can you access like the tunnels that go beneath the park no the utilidors no i don't think it goes that i don't know if there's a way to like interact with with it in a way outside of what i designed right like can you put it into some sort of build mode and mess it up yes you can um it is you can talk you can also like collect autographs like they have like all the disney characters all around the park that you can go get their autographs which was similar to that even some that um i I mean, aren't in the Magic Kingdom. Oh, okay, okay.

You're not going to see it on it. No, that's ridiculous. Is it available on all platforms? Like, can I play this on Switch? Yeah. Wow. Yes. Yeah, it's just part of the...

You could have all of Disney World on your Switch. That's how I've been playing it. Wow. Yeah, it's, I mean, it's amazing. I mean, I really, it is, the amount of work that went into it, I'm not used to, under JPEG's leadership, any Disney project getting this amount of TLC. And to see this kind of work going into it is really phenomenal.

It's a real labor of love, it must be, because I know they're not laying out the cash. It's actually surprising that more brands have not done this, like paid builders builders minecraft builders to just like make well the i don't know game of thrones land or something they have oh they have it's not i mean it's not uncommon for there to be like minecraft mods that are sponsored by you know like oh god virgin galactic or whatever it's just i i think what's interesting here is it is an actual partnership with Microsoft

and it is like of this scale yeah it's just yeah and I'm sure it's not one to one because it's made of cubes

but like and Elsa's there by one to one I mean like and Elsa's there yes I don't know Elsa's at the park

aren't they where would Elsa be at the park did you even think about it before you asked Anna's meet and greet with Elsa is over in park, aren't they? Where would Elsa be at the park? Did you even think about it before you asked that question? Anna's meet and greet with Elsa is over in the... Of course, it's Epcot.

...the World Showcase. Well, but... Yeah, you're right. I'm so sorry, everybody. Yeah, but where's the Gak fall on you? Oh, Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ, Russ. Ba-da-da.

You're embarr... Hey, Russ, you're embarrassing yourself you've been embarrassed i'm sorry okay i i have i have one other honorable mention that i want to make i want to i want to share two podcasts and also like a story uh from the things that i listen to in my free time i enjoy listening to football podcasts and i swear this is going, so please. So the sad part about this is I listen to two shows. I listen to this show called Times Ours, which is a Kansas City Chiefs podcast, and I listen to a show that is now called You Pod to Win the Game, which was Yahoo Sports' football podcast. And that second one, You Pod to Win the Game, right after the Super Bowl this this year one of the co-hosts

um unexpectedly passed away teres paler um who was like kind of a i mean that kind of was a huge presence in kansas city chiefs uh football culture and his co-host charles robinson has continued to host that show um kind of reviving it uh this. And then the other one, The Times Ours, the Chiefs, very specifically Chiefs podcast, a listener of the show, Josh Briscoe had a pretty awful health scare right in the middle of the season. So in the course of a year, it was a lot for, you know, parasocial relationships, frankly, that I have with the these two shows. And they both have continued and they both just mean, like the absolute world to me. They are my I'm sure there are some people listening to this show who have that feeling of, you know, it's what you listen

to when you want to feel good when you're on a walk and you've had a hard day. So I just want to shout both those out. I understand time's ours. The Chiefs one is a very narrow part of our potential audience. But if you do like football, I think you might like either of those. Cool. I wanted to, speaking of thank you,

thank the following people for writing reviews for the besties. Raul Argar de Barranco, Dane Girl, Tadro Chester, Bitty Alec, and Quasimandias. Thank you very much for writing reviews. Thank you to everyone else who has written reviews about the besties on Apple Podcasts.

Love to see them. They're great. Super helpful. Okay, here we go. I'm going to make this fast. Games that we talked about. We talked about Pokemon Diamond and Pearl and their modern remakes. We talked about a bunch of Pokemon games, New Pokemon Snap, Pokemon Unite, Pokken Tournament, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon, Pokemon Let's Go Pikachu and Eevee, Sword and

Shield, Cafe Remix. We also had a nice long extended chunk of honorable mentions that included Forza Horizon 5, Unsighted, Pony Island, which is another game by the creator of Inscription, Halo Infinite, Binding of Isaac, Repentance, that Minecraft Disney Magic Kingdom expansion.

It's seven bucks, by the way. What? I don't know if we mentioned that. Seven bucks. Seven bucks. It's seven bucks. Oh, thank you. That Minecraft thing.

I was worried that. If you're curious about like what is something like that run you, I mean you pay a hundred bucks to get in the park on an off day, you can pay seven bucks in Minecraft. That's a great point. I also mentioned Time's Hours and Epod to win the game. We also shared a lot of game pass and video game books and other recommendations for that stuff. Just barring us repeating the entire show.

I will, I will let you go back to that chunk with the rewind button. But I hope that this helped out. Hey, that's going to do it for us. Thank you so much for listening. We certainly appreciate you. And some configuration of us will be here with you next week to talk about

games of the fall and hidden gems you might have missed. But until that time, thank you, as always, for joining us for the besties. But 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. Besties!