The Besties - Still Deciding the Best Resident Evil Game

Episode Date: June 11, 2021

Last week we narrowed down the the best Resident Evil games to the final four, and now we're having them duke it out. We've got some truly classic zombie gems going at it this week, and you won't guess what we decide! (Well, you might guess it. In the grand scheme of things there aren't that many options left. But act surprised.) 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 am evolving as we speak. Every single day, I evolve into a new, better human being, and I will tell you the latest evolution of my abilities as a human being. You're not lactose intolerant anymore? No, no, I'm definitely still lactose intolerant. But the last few weeks while I've been eating breakfast, you know, I've got my big thing of water, and I'll be eating, and then I'll start choking a little bit

and I'll try to like drink. Is this every day? Does this happen every time you eat? Not every day, but like frequently. Once a week maybe. Have you seen a doctor? So you're saying you live with someone who every morning is like,

oh, that's just Russ's morning choke. Yeah. I shouldn't go in there. That's probably true. He gets so embarrassed if I see him choking. Now, it should be noted that I, for a while, was like drinking water to try to clear the choke out. You know how it is?

Yeah, yeah, sure, sure. That's what science says, to clear the choke out. It does, yeah, because when you have food lodged in your windpipe, you need its good friend water to also go down windpipe to show it what for. Definitely true. To guide it tenderly down the windpipe.

I have a feeling that however this thought ends is wilder than whatever he's saying right now, so we should just let him turn on through. So this happened a lot where I'd start choking and I'd try to, regardless, it didn't usually go great. Basically one of two things happened. One, I'd waterboard myself and basically couldn't breathe for 30 seconds because I tried to force the water down.

Option two, my mouth would be full and my nose has been kind of stuffed, so I couldn't breathe. And there was really nowhere for the water to go, so I just spit the water all over myself. Awesome. So that happened a bunch of times. This morning started happening again. bunch of times this morning started happening again my brain reached a point where i was like wait a minute grab the glass russ just spit it out back into the glass and i did that and you know what guys great wait wait wait wait wait you just poured water you poured ineffective water into your choking mouth and then just dumped the water right back out into the glass?

Well, I spit the water back into the glass once I started choking. What you're describing is a milestone that my son hit between the age of two and three. This is the problem with doing this as the cold open is anytime we start with a rust-centric cold open my impulse is always 100% of the time is always fuck video games i don't want to talk about them can we spend a half hour on rust who just gets i i can't i cannot believe you get weirder as you get older i've known you for a decade first off getting sexier and more handsome every day, infuriating. The beard looks fantastic. Let me get that out of the way. So I can say, how are you becoming more, more maddening as the years progress?

The older handsomeness, Justin, is his award for not killing himself while doing the most basic human function. while doing the most basic human function. And I guess our reward for tolerating and embracing him all these years. He got this. Pwn him. My name is Justin McElroy, and I know the best Resident Evil game. My name is Scrooge McElroy, and I know the best Resident Evil game of the week. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant, and I know the best Resident Evil game of the moment. My name is Rose Farzik, know the best Resident Evil game of the moment My name is Rose Farce

And I know the best game of the week I want to start off by saying This is the besties This is the show where friends Discuss the latest and greatest in home Interactive entertainment It's a video game club And just by listening

You have joined You've been conscripted into our ranks. So welcome to you. Usually we talk about a new game or a bevy of new games, but we have recently begun trying to ferret out the best of certain franchises. We did it with Zelda. We did it with certain years of games. And we are neck deep in the Resident Evil franchise.

of games and uh we are uh neck deep in the resident evil franchise if you didn't listen last week go back and we we we winnowed down a list of what what was it russ what we start with we started with 10 uh and now we're down to four we're down to four um and i wanted to give a little bit of credit before we begin to some of the other Resident Evil games that we didn't even discuss. And it seems like a huge oversight to me. First off, ResidentEvilOnTheGame.com. Now,

I don't know if you guys played this one or not. Oh, of course. No, we got the big ones. We got the, no, we didn't talk about all the Resident Evil games because there are too many.

And a bad Resident Evil game is just about as bad as it gets. So we are down to four. What do we got? We've got Resident Evil 4 going up against Resident Evil 2. Holy cow. And we've got the newbies, Resident Evil 7 versus Resident Evil Village in the semifinals. That's a good pairing.

Also, just to finish Justin's idea, all the non-Resident Evil core games are semifinals. It's a good pairing. Also, just to finish Justin's idea, all the non-Resident Evil core games are pretty much bad, but the best non-core Resident Evil games are the knockoffs. Dino Crisis, Parasite Eve, those games do deserve a little bit of love.

Parasite Eve was a Square Enix joint. Yeah, I'm saying like games that were like... It's an alike. I guess so. StarSide Eve was a Square Enix joint. Yeah, I'm saying like games that were like. But it's an alike. Yeah. I mean, it's an alike. They're building on it. I guess so. I guess so. I mean, I'm a big fan of Resident Evil Gaiden for the Game Boy Color.

You know, they did their best with the limited bits and bytes that they had available to them. Sure. So which one's first of these? Is it 2v4? We're going to be doing 2v, Resident Evil 2 versus Resident Evil 4 first. I will champion Resident Evil 2, which goes against my better instincts because 4 might be my winner,

but after replaying the 2 remake, I think I recognized what a triumph that game is. And I definitely played it a bit on the original PlayStation, even though the first one gave me such terrible nightmares. But you want to talk about a game that just kind of steps it up in every conceivable way.

I feel like the very first sequel to a new IP, especially during that PlayStation 1 era, was usually pretty bad. Usually you had a pretty tight turnaround time, and there was a lot of sort of cashing in uh going on that was very very i would say prevalent uh back back in the day maybe still a bit today but uh not quite as bad as it was back then but man resident evil 2 beats the shit out of resident evil 1 in quality, in scope and ambition, in, might I say, fun factor.

Fun factor, yeah, can't discount it. Fun factor's through the roof. But let me ask you this thing. Do you think that would be the case if Resident Evil 2 hadn't gotten that remake that basically made it like modern day playable? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I for sure think, I mean, yes, Resident Evil 2 on PlayStation is still like a fantastic game, basically made it like modern day play yeah yeah yeah i for sure think i mean yes the resident evil

2 on playstation is still like a a fantastic game even though it's got it's it's got the tanky controls of resident evil 1 but like a lot of the i mean it's still got some dog shit puzzles but uh fewer of them i would argue and it also is just such a bigger package you have the the two different protagonists with like sort of diverging package. You have the two different protagonists with like sort of diverging storylines. You did have two good protagonists in the first game, just to fact check. Well, yeah, but I feel like the difference

between those two wasn't quite as dramatic. That's true. One could pick locks and one was big. That was about it. Just the environments were a lot more, I mean, it was a bigger world you had all of raccoon city more or less and then uh you know the police station the sewers um uh i'm trying to remember all the comic book shop the comic book shop sure um there's just so much there's so much

there um yeah it's very very good it also expanded sort of like um the the combat i guess just by virtue of adding sort of more weapons and more ways to kind of interact with the world i feel like by the end of resident evil one you are still sort of scrambling for survival but at the end of resident evil two that's like the first time that they're like here's a here's a grenade launcher like yeah and and a lot of ammo for it go you know blow up all this stuff which you know would eventually lead to the series's downfall but they use it sparingly enough in in resident evil 2 um yeah i don't i don't know how if it is fair for us to factor in the remake i think we need to because it's not close in my opinion. Resident Evil 4

destroys the original. Not even close. I think we need to. If you had to sight and scene play one of these, I feel like Resident Evil 4 is a very good game. I'm not discounting that. The improvements

that have made to Resident Evil 2 in the remake make it seem so much more relevant and a pleasure to play and cool to look at and like if you're gonna play one right now in 2021 and there's probably a lot of people for whom like are coming to this late who have not experienced those games i feel like 2 is currently like the better experience just because it hasn't gotten like the is there anybody who that could be? Who could that be? Who haven't played either of them?

Who hasn't played Resident Evil 4? This guy. Please don't underestimate our decrepitness. Anytime you do, start to forget how decrepit we are as human beings. We're a crepe keeper. There's a new generation of people who

will need to have 9-11 explained to them. Chris Plant did not play Resident Evil 4. I know. Chris is the young, nubile, sort of dewy flesh. So how did 4 hit you then?

Terrible. Terrible. It is not pleasurable. I'm a zoomer, baby. So how did 4 hit you then? Terrible. You guy. Yeah. Terrible. That's what I'm saying. It is not pleasurable. The controls are extremely not fun. The beginning of the game is extremely not fun with those controls.

To be fair, I did my research because I already can feel my at replies. They're so much fun right now. I watched a lot of it once i couldn't stand playing it anymore and and i get it it looks awesome when somebody has the ability to control it i think the remake of this is going to do it a huge service and it will be awesome and maybe it'll become my favorite resident evil game i think the difference between this and resident evil 2 going back and playing resident evil 2 is it's still tight corridors and the game is designed with the tank controls in mind. I think the problem with Resident Evil 4 is it comes right in the middle of two different epochs of control, right?

You got like, it's kind of a tank game, but it kind of wants to be a modern action game. And as a result, it feels feels really really brutal to me a new player playing it in the year of our lord 2021 okay chris plant this is important yes i know you said you played it how far did you play it i got past the first village okay so you got basically into the reason i ask and this is something that i told you as you were struggling with it is because that first village area is maybe the hardest part of the entire game it's really or potentially the entire series it is the wildest way to start out a game is saying you have nothing here's a village with 30 people in it and they're all going to try to kill you all at once and we are not going to tell you what the fuck's going on.

Where to go. How to survive. What to do. Yeah. Yeah. It's bonkers. I was going to say. I think the rest of the game is more designed around the controls than that first area is.

And honestly. If we did not know a remake was going to be coming in the next couple years. Right? Like it's going to happen. I probably would commit to it and just play years right like it's going to happen i probably would commit to it and just play through because it's like whatever i have to learn it this is going to be my opportunity to play this game i'll make it work but between the remake and the vr experience which i think i would much prefer um just in terms of like aiming it's like man you

know what i i know that i'm going to like this game. I'd rather just save it for a version of it that I'm going to find like the most pleasurable. Again, none of this is fair, I think, in terms of like fully docking it because we're just talking about it. Like literally, what if you just are that random person you happen to be picking it up today? My defense of Resident Evil 2 is I couldn't have it as a little kid because my mom said it was too scary. And she spoke with the person at Babbage's and they said you would be a bad mom if you gave them this to your kid so i coveted it for years and then when i finally got it it was the rare game that completely lived up to it like it was just like when you finally got it were you playing the original were you playing the remake i was playing the original yeah i mean it was only like three or four years later but when i played it it was like wow this is as adult

and as scary and cool as i thought it would be you know so many of those games as a kid like mortal kombat you play it and you're like this isn't actually this is just kind of like a mediocre fighting game resident evil tv playing like wow this is... A lot of big ideas. The original, okay, come on. The original Mortal Kombat is a mediocre fighting game. I want to really quickly come to the defense of the opening of Resident Evil 4 because I've been sitting here thinking about it. The Resident Evil games have a bad tendency to, like, blow up their own power curve

to the point where it's not a scary thing at all and it becomes, like, a big kind of blockbuster meathead shooting game which is not its core competency and i think by the end of three and code veronica like they had explored the power curve that they had sort of initially installed in in resident evil to like the fullness of of their ability and so it almost makes sense that in resident evil 4 you start out in this like horrifying scramble where you are ill-equipped to handle like this this flood of zombies that are coming after you and then once you get past that it's a slow curve of like finding treasures to

give to the trader to like upgrade your pistol and my favorite thing i think resident evil 4 has the best like rpg totally progression mechanics of all of the games even the newest ones like finding a new weapon and upgrading it feels so impactful because you are always up against it in resident evil 4 yeah and and for me like that is i know not the core dna of the series and maybe not the thing that most people judge it by, but like, I don't know. I am still drawn to Resident Evil 4 because I walk into a body of water

and I'm like, I gotta cut up these fish with my knife or else I am not going to have enough like health to like make it through this next section. Yeah, I feel ownership over the character in Resident Evil 4 in ways that I really don't in most of the other games because i am making these impactful like what pistol am i using what shock am i using how am i arranging the fucking briefcase which is the best thing in any resident evil game i love that briefcase

and uh having that inventory system made me feel ownership here's a little secret y'all the story and the lore of resident evil is fucking bullshit stupid i'm sorry for people that like it it's fucking bullshit stupid so all that really leaves you with is the experience of playing it and the you know here's this moment where i shot a what a rocket launcher at a giant guy that was coming at me that stuff's exciting and great and fun but if you remove the lore stuff all you really have is who are you playing as in my case i'm leon in resident evil 4 and i've selected my whole loadout and i feel like i am control of how i'm playing the game whereas in a lot of the other

games i feel like i'm kind of following a pretty set path in how those games play. I do think you've got to give Ethan Winters a hand. Come on, Christopher! Come on, Christopher! We're not talking about Ethan Winters. We can't do that. Also, I don't want to discount spin kicks. Resident Evil 4 does have the ability to do what you want.

When a zombie is closing in on you, it is almost always a frustrating experience in any game with slow moving enemies like this except resident evil 4 finally says like what if you just fucking spin kick and then the zombies are 100 vulnerable to spin kicks basically it's insta kill as far as i'm concerned that's the thing i don't understand about resident evil fandom though i feel like so many times a new resident evil game comes out and people like yeah i like i like the beginning when it plays it straight but eventually it just becomes too much you know not like resident evil 4 that's the masterpiece and it's like what no you're like firing rockets and no it takes a

while it takes a while to get there that's every resident evil game people talk about it like this isn't how every resident evil game works they all take this trajectory yeah they all get bonkers i think the pacing in four is better than the other games for the most part because it takes so long before it really becomes silly yeah it's not that long is it like 26 hours let's let's that sounds good to me what's what's what are we feeling here how are we leaning because i'm gonna let you three vote because i i feel like i'm a little bit on i i i'll i'll i'll dive in if after you three vote okay okay uh i mean i i think it's i think it's fourth for that one reason. The progression of four is, I think, the best in the series.

And I really like it. Juice? Yeah, four is cool. I mean, I don't have a lot of religion here. I mean, I think two is cool. I know myself, I have a bias towards games that have been updated towards modern sensibilities and have become more pleasurable experiences i i'm trying to think of it like this

if four got a modern update in the same way that two had i would probably be going for four it's just a richer experience overall um i'm still taking into account the remake with 2, but I feel like that's not necessarily enough to put it over the top of 4. I would lean 4. I know we have a lot of new listeners since we dropped Spotify. A little Mary V's

town right there. Is that how the relationship works? We dropped Spotify. I'll never forget. We were like, this is too far. We went to them and we grabbed them by their heads. We said, listen, it's Joe Rogan or us, baby.

And we walked. They didn't even think about it. They're like, how did you get in here? If you're new to the show, you should go back and listen to the episode we did on both the Resident Evil 2 and the Resident Evil 3 remakes. Because those games are great. Especially that Resident Evil 2 remake

might be the best remake ever of a video game. It's pretty good. It's incredible. And also, I just looked it up. Resident Evil 4 for VR, I think it drops later this year. Yeah, it is. I can't wait. Quest 2, which is finally a reason for me to upgrade.

You can type on the typewriter in VR. Yeah, you can. You can throw your gun and knife up in the air and catch them. Maybe, probably even stab yourself. I'm so excited. Okay. Yeah. Okay, I think that sounds fine.

Resident Evil 4 wins. All right. Now it's just 7v8. You want to talk? I feel like Juice can, if you are the fan of the modern shit, this is about as modern as it gets. I mean, it's, oh, this is tough because obviously there's some recency bias.

I just had a great time playing 8. Have we all finished 8 at this point? Yeah. Yes. Okay. Okay. But we'll try to keep it, obviously, like we're not going to get into spoilers or stuff.

But I had a great time playing 8, and I think that there is so much to like about it. I feel like this is one where it really does come down to more of a matter of taste because I feel like seven is a better horror experience in terms of like, whoa, I'm scared. And eight is a better like action gameplay kind of experience. Um, yeah, they're both excellent games. action gameplay kind of experience. Yeah. They're both excellent games. I mean, 7, if you don't have any context here,

7 came out, we did this a little bit last week, but 7 was an incredible rebirth for this franchise that had been languishing for a decade. Completely back to its roots, back to, not even back to its roots, but like a reevaluation of what it means to be this franchise in the modern era.

It's very intimate. It's a haunted house experience. Like that's straight over the plate haunted house with like a bigger than life cast of characters. And they can grab you, which normally you can't get grabbed in a haunted house, but here they can. Here they can touch you and not get fired

because it's not their job. It's their life. And you are allowed to attack them back, which is definitely not cool in a haunted house but here they can here they can touch you and not get fired because it's not their job it's their life and you are allowed to attack them back which is definitely not cool in a haunted house typically um my only real knock against seven is that in the last quarter to a third it loses a lot it changes the environment and loses a lot of like the really special character of um the the first part of the game in a way that i feel like kind of breaks the tension a little bit um it becomes much more combat heavy and action focused and i think it's it succeeds less often than it does in the first part of the game. And 8 does the same thing, but without spoilers.

It does it in, it provides more context that makes that heel turn. It's better at what it does, at that twist, than 7. Even though it is an extremely, one might say, uh that seven does it does it much it does it much better age eight also has a better sense of humor i think yeah these two games i would compare it to um batman arkham asylum versus what was the one right after that the city arkham oh yeah arkham yeah where i think seven is close to flawless in that each section leads into the next, but it's a very compact world that you're in. It's like that house and the neighboring structures. So there's not a lot of room for it to slip up.

8, for better and for worse, has the village. And there are parts of that that I like a lot where you're like, oh, I can go down the river and I can find these like bonus things. And that's very fun. Or there's other side quest bosses. All that's great. Then there's also parts where you're like stuck in the village and you can't figure out which direction to go because the map makes it look like you can go down a path, but you can't. And that is just messy. There's just a little bit more messiness at random points. But I think the individual

components, like once you actually get to where you're going, are better pretty much top to bottom than VII, barring the first character that you fight, the dad in VII. I think his entire, like, that first period in the house in VII is fantastic. And after that, I think his entire like that first period in the house in 7 is fantastic.

After that I think it kind of like it's not bad. I disagree man. Pretty much every boss fight in 7 completely kicks ass. Completely kicks ass. Yeah there's a chainsaw fight. I don't know if you remember the fact that there's a fucking

chainsaw duel. The fight where the big worm mom is like climbing all over the building that you are inside and trying to play hide and seek with her. The bit with the car? Yeah, the car is the one that I remember. The car is part of the first one. Say what you will about 7. The boss fights are much, much, much, much, much better than 8.

I think 8's a great game, and I think 8 had a lot of incredible moments. And we've extolled the virtues of 8 very, very very recently so you don't need me to go on but the boss fights in seven and the characters in seven and the way that i don't know how how comprehensive that all is is phenomenal is is absolutely i think eight is only so i think eight so not not a lot of what you're talking about i think is the fact that eight does try to loosen the reins a little bit yeah like it's not as tight of an experience but i think that's by design because they are trying to give you more flexibility in how much you um you know how much of the world you are exploring what kind of of, like, strategy you want to take

when you're exploring through, how thorough you want to be. I think that 8 is interesting in that I feel like it is the first one of these where, like, you are not, it is not absolutely essential that, I mean, most survival horror games are very much about, like, walk through the room

and get every last scrap of stuff that's littered about and i feel like eight lightens up on the resource management a little bit that lets you focus on like the game parts rather than just the you know uh maddeningly clicking every interactive thing in the environment yeah it's designed i think in such a way that like technically you could beat the game if you really just like being a total moron and like missing all the glowy bits and yeah because of that it will feel a little bit mushier and there will be times where you feel overpowered for a circumstance because you've been really thorough previously i like that because

i feel like i'm rewarded for my persistence and like checking corners and stuff like that but i also realized but i also acknowledged that like i really dislike the like stress of playing a game where like i'm scared all the time and yeah and i've spoken about this before the reason why i was not able to get into seven was because it is like kind of the opposite sort of game that i enjoy playing but i know tons of people who do enjoy that yeah it's so it's so wild because i just talked about how four is one of my favorites because of the the progression and the gear and the sort of rpg-ness of it and eight basically replicates that right like yeah i think it's still better in four but it is it is better in four i think i agree with you uh but for whatever reason like seven had the what

the coins you could find that you could buy like a few different upgrades here or there um and yeah i don't know we've we've gone pretty long on this and i'm curious of how everyone is is feeling because i i i weirdly think it's seven for me i think i like seven better yeah i i think i lean towards seven i i adore both these games i think i yeah i'm in justice camp where i think i like eight a lot more than most people do right now i think it rules but seven is just is there a vibe against eight are people not loving eight i don't i think people are i think people like it i think people like it a lot but i don't think it's had as rapturous of a moment as 7.

But 7, just the vibe. In the same way that I love the energy of Resident Evil 1. I mean, we talked about all the ways that Resident Evil 2 is better than 1. I personally prefer the vibe of 1 more. I like that kind of compact, classic, early Romero horror energy. I think I found 8. I think it's got to be eight for me it's like such a pleasurable experience i love the balance between horror and action i think the uh it's it's there's a better sense of humor in eight that's so fun and funny and the stakes of eight are much more relatable and understandable than they have

been and i and also like we haven't touched on this much but like i love the structure of eight yeah i love that you like are going into like you're in a hub world that you're returned to and will gradually expand but then when you go into these other environments it's with the acknowledgement that like i'm not coming back here so it's like i it's this great sense of progression where you're like okay i'm going to clear all this out because this is my one chance to get this stuff i mean you can go back but like it's not necessarily designed for you to have to do that to venture off into these hub worlds and then come back to a central environment where you can breathe a little bit um while still there's a sense of danger and stuff does happen in the in the central hub but like worlds and then come back to a central environment where you can breathe a little bit.

While still there's a sense of danger and stuff does happen in the, in the central hub, but like it feels so good to have these ebbs and flows between tension and a rebuilding phase. And I think makes the tense moments land that much more. It's more flexible. I love that you're not scavenging for every single pistol shot. So where it encourages you, like, hey, shoot these guys.

Like, go for it. We'll find some more bullets somewhere. Don't sweat it. That's not the tension. The tension is like things happening to you in the environment and not an artificial tension created by scarcity of resources.

It's got to be 8 for me. What I would say in in defensive eight is i think you know there are scary parts in eight certainly the like dollhouse which we've talked about at length is like a very creepy element like moment and what i liked about that is that it was at most 40 minutes long and i had that experience and it was like satisfying it wasn't this like oppressive i've got four more hours of this which is the vibe that i was getting from uh seven i feel bad because again it does boil down to taste and whether you like that experience like whether you like playing alien isolation or whatever and hiding from a terrible thing for hours on end i don't i much prefer the you know action mixed with occasional terror um which is why i like

village so i don't know if that convinced anyone to go otherwise but i'll yeah i'll switch yeah i don't i don't i justin makes a great point like the for me it wasn't the structure the strength of the structure wasn't like this feeling of, oh, I need to complete all of this stuff because I'm not coming back here as much as it was like, I'm going to walk through this door into this new kingdom and not know what kind of genre it's going to be going for, what kind of vibe it's going to be. what kind of vibe it's going to be. You know, this one is like an adventure puzzle game, more or less. And this one is just a straight up, like, mow down just hordes of zombies. Like, that was very exciting.

And while 7 is more like, obviously cohesive sort of experience until the last third, that was super fun. In my mind, they are very, very, very close. So I don't mind switching. I'm switching just for the moment when you meet a character later in the game and they give you a very powerful weapon and then tell you to be subtle about it.

It's Justin's comment about like the sense of humor in, in eight is pretty fantastic. Yeah. Okay. We'll do eight. That leads us with Resident evil 4 versus resident evil village coming up in the finals after this break you think it's a tie that's certainly not that seems bad okay can we do eight is a higher number than four so that's true but the game is not called

resident evil 8 it's called village so what is village a higher number than four it has more than four letters in it it does and it also has the it has the a base in roman numerals and i don't know if you saw it you know how they made some of the letters different it's kind of subtle it's pretty subtle and cute and winky the fact that we've landed on these two games does this mean that they should just make all Resident Evil games in a village? Or they should make them by fours, right? So we won't get another truly great one until 12. Uh-oh.

Well, 11 will be pretty good too and we'll be torn about whether 11 or 12 is better. Golly. We've done ourselves a real disservice here because we do not excel at here's a great game from the past that was formative for the series

and also in a lot of ways the genre as a whole versus here is the better version of that that came out six months ago. That's a very good point, Griffin, and I would like to touch on that if you're listening to this. You should understand that what we are doing at this point,

at least from my perspective, is codifying our own metrics versus weighing the objective quality of these two properties like right it's it's irrelevant i mean it's like it's yeah it's our favorite right right there are no objective properties of games spoiler well but the podcast isn't called the favoritesies right but i'm saying that this is more complicated because in a way that the zelda conversation was not because we are because those games you can still go back to and they can succeed or fail based on their own merits in a way that like a lot of games in this franchise cannot

cannot stand because they're bumping up against a lot of like 3d cruft. Yeah. I don't link to the past still. Like you don't need, we're not, we didn't have to weigh the HD remake of link to the past versus breath of the wild link to the past looked great. Like whips ass whips ass and has whipped ass.

That's why it's muddier with with the the climate of remakes here i think it is somewhat muddier but in this case i still despite what plant said in the intro i do believe that you can go back and play for right now if you can get past that first part which is genuinely the hardest part of the game and adapt to the controls which are a little hinky but totally manageable and it is a stunning game i also wanted to like i mean there's obviously a ton of similarities between these two games so i'm going to just talk about a few of them and my personal preference is i still lean towards four and here's a couple reasons why one they both have briefcases that is true yeah the briefcase in four is a more meaningful briefcase.

Better. Because you actually need to consider, should I pick this thing up or not? Whereas the briefcase in eight, basically, it might as well be infinite because you can carry so much shit in that briefcase. In four, you have to make decisions like, do I get rid of this one big egg

so that I can fit these two smaller eggs in my briefcase? Will I get more health from the small brown egg and the small white egg or one big white egg? What a game. I do. I love, though, but in 8, sometimes you open up your briefcase and you're like, God, I got a lot of chicken in here. I got to clear out some of this chicken. I got a lot of chicken in here.

I gotta clear out some of this chicken. That is just one example of something that I particularly like. These two games are conversations with each other, which is very cool. I mean, even the shopkeeper in this game, which is a sort of idea from 4, the shopkeeper's like, it is kind of a weird, maybe it works better in the original Japanese, but it's a weird moment where he's like, it is kind of a weird, maybe it works better in the original Japanese,

but it's a weird moment where he's like, what are you buying? It's like, that's something a friend of mine I used to know would say sometimes. Like, you didn't need to do that. That was not the only way to handle this. I enjoyed the merchant in 4 better just because his shit was much more straightforward. He didn't talk to me cryptically about my about my weird space baby he was just like i'm here to provide

goods and services and you have above you have a bunch of crystal skulls i love okay let's talk about that for a second griffin yeah i actually disagree with you on this. Okay. I love the addition in eight of a force that understands this world. It's a classic, like fantasy. It's basically Tom Bombadil. Yeah. A force that understands this world better than you do that may be friend or maybe foe.

And it's kind of like on the sidelines somewhere where like they understand what is going on on a deeper level than you do and i think that if you have a character like that it makes the it makes it seem a lot less like a game designer created the whole thing and more like this world that has a lot of stuff going on underneath the surface that you don't necessarily see and i feel like that the that character of the duke like lends the world a lot of credibility. I think it makes it seem more cohesive. And there's a cooler backstory of stuff going on than just video game levels designed for you.

I got that same vibe from the shopkeeper in 4 without them being as explicit about it. as explicit about it like the fact that this guy is like constantly around didn't it like in it hinted at this idea that there's this like weird guy that's mystical and unexplained in a franchise that like over explains everything and that like level of subtlety and like lack of explanation worked for me better than it did in eight where like not only is the guy around and constantly talking to you about like what you're doing he also like plays a crucial role in the climax of the game which seemed weird and like not necessarily i don't know didn't fit for me why i mean why i mean drill down i mean it's basically the idea of what is it deus ex machina the idea that like this magical god-like being it can't be deus ex machina when the fool has

been hanging around the whole time that's not dead nobody shows up like there like deus ex sitting on a car without him the climax of the game does not happen right you we're getting it we're getting a little in the spoiler we don't need to get into literary three i i do agree with with um chris plant for the for what's worth has never said that before and has never said that since it gave me chills to hear chris say let's not get into literary theory gosh go ahead fine i agree with hoops i i like the character of the duke a lot beyond the obvious likes of the visual design i think is complicated um i i can't tell if they're trying to go for humpty dumpty because obviously all the resident evil characters assigned to a certain fairy tale but when i was

playing it what it reminded me of was um the ghost of christmas past like this like like justin said this larger than life thing that is like weirdly all-knowing this like know me better man vibe of like this is a friend you said past or present present present is the one that's like kind of a santa yeah yeah yeah that guy thank you um but like yeah there was something like a magical about him that i just enjoyed i enjoyed like the look of his shop i but anyway i don't want i don't want to get way too into the shopkeeper or the briefcase so these are not the things that were so granular let's talk about the actual like game game stuff i think what is and again, I'm only going off what I've watched Resident Evil 4, so I'm struggling here. But what I like about Resident Evil 4 is it does feel like a journey.

It seems like it is a thing that stretches onward, and you're going through the castle, and you're going through like... It feels like a Souls game or like a Castlevania game in that way where you start small and then you're like constantly going big. Yeah, but these are choices, right? Because then I also think Justin's right about the like the wheel approach of Resident Evil 8 where you're going out to the different spokes. I think both those things work really well. I personally prefer the thing that Justin's talking about now. Like I'm literally saying just like right now, where am I at in my love of video games? I love a really intentionally designed

single player video game. I think I'm just so exhausted on either the Souls format or the open world format that having something that is a little bit more compact, you go into a place, you see everything there is to see in it, and then you come back and cash in your rewards and then go do it again and again and again that really appeals specifically to me right now i i just want to point out because i don't think we've really mentioned this is that four is a linear game like it has it has chapters and when you leave a section of that world behind i don't i don't know that there's a part where you come back to it. Yeah, I don't think you can go, like, yeah, no. So it is, I mean, in that regard,

four is also exceptionally intentional because it's linear. When I say the difference here is it is not, it's linear in a straight line, not like you go out and then you explore this, like, chunk of hub. Like, again when i say odyssey it is like it is a journey it's 20 hours of like moving in a line going along what it wants you to see there's a ton of stuff again i'm only going off of what i've what i've watched so i'm limited here i need i need that sweet seat resident evil 4 insight from y'all i almost wish we were doing this after the VR remake came out.

Because I am not joking when I say that the Wii version of Resident Evil 4 is the best version of it. Because Chris is right. Like, I tried to play Resident Evil 4 on the Switch very recently. And the controls aren't, like, they do not hold up to much scrutiny. Like it did not take very, very long for 3D action game developers to like figure out how to do it a lot better than this. But just having, I don't know, that power curve of four when it feels right,

like when it feels good, which I'm hoping they can do in in the vr remake uh is god it's it's so good it's so good and that's what it boils down to i agree with everything you guys say about the the structure of eight it is a it is a it's disneyland like you go to the different worlds of it and like get these completely different experiences and then come back to the hub and see what you've unlocked to get like that's fantastic and i'm if eight wins i'm fine with that because i think it may be the better game but i cannot i think my favorite thing about the entire resident evil franchise is playing four on the wii over the course of like a weekend and the like breathless excitement of like i just

got a new stock for my shotgun yeah I have an idea. Are you ready? I think we choose a temporary winner. We write this down in pencil. Whoa, I love this. We write it down in pencil. We say, this is what we're choosing right now. And we meet back up after Resident Evil 4 VR. So what you're saying is we temporarily give it to 8 and then we say resident four

come get your crown if you think you can take it out of eight's hands it's up to you come back come back and get it i like this come back and get it if you want it don't get mad at us because you're old and look like dog shit yeah i think get get it tight tighten it up a little bit a little go crush some more reps. But please remember, it is about progress, not perfection. Yeah. Take the time for you, for sure. But then go get your fucking ground if you want it so bad.

Tighten up the graphics on level three and then come get that ground. What was that from? Was that like a full sale commercial? Yeah, it was a full sale commercial. Shit, I don't know what. Fresh, can you live with that? Yeah, it was a full sale commercial. Shit, I don't know what. Fresh, can you live with that? Yeah, I can live with that.

I, you know, I hope, I'm hopeful people won't be pissed by that decision. People are going to be so mad. People are going to hate me so much. Oh yeah, they will be. Okay, everyone blame Chris Plant. But that just means we have an engaged listenership. But listen, no, that just means that like, you know, later this year, this fall, come November or December, you have to an expensive vr headset to be a part of the finale of this conversation yeah it's jay paul and mayweather convinced us anything it's that building up a crazy duo matchup in the future will cause people to spend a bunch of money so that's the plan yeah also before you rush to my Twitter and just spam my replies, do me a solid.

Go buy Resident Evil 4 on Switch and try to play it. It costs $20. If you think that that feels good, I will hear you out. Also, I'm going to go back and play some more because I want to buy into this idea that Freshick has it. Now that I've gotten past the hard part, I'm going to suddenly like these controls. I don't think you're going to like them. You can probably find it on eBay or something

to get it on Wii and get that. That's your homework. I want you to play a Wii game in 2021. You've played Resident Evil 4, but have you ever played Resident 4 on Wii? That's good shit, Juice, thanks. That's good. That's good, though. All right. Takes back let's let's talk about other franchise congratulations

for now if russ is okay with this he's been strangely silent i'll live with it okay to resident evil 8 let's do some reader mail real quick okay i i uh fresh uh asked people for some memories and i dug up some ones that i liked uh this one is from andrew i remember playing the demo of resident evil 4 at eb games as a kid the chaos of the opening in the village and the first time meeting one of the chainsaw guys left an impression on me that continues to this day to the quality of the game if you're at an eb games in a mall and you're like can still get scared still get still get it that's a good demo right there this one is from a friend of the show druid cast leon kennedy is one of my favorite characters

in anything because of how much himbo energy he exudes so i'm super torn between in resident evil 2 whenever he sees a zombie and yells, what is that thing? Or in Resident Evil 4, when he tells Salazar, no thanks, bro. Honestly, Olive 4 is perfect. He is. Do I think Himbo? I don't know if Himbo is quite right.

I feel like Chris Redfield may be more Himbo than- I don't know, dude. Leon in 4. A lot of man candy in this franchise. Yeah, Leon in 4 is a real sack of bricks uh he is he is he is fantastic uh this one's from alex one of the most memorable moments for me was uh when resident evil 7 fully turns into a resident evil game as soon as you get into the main hall of the house doors have locks for specific keys there's a shotgun that traps you in the room if you take

it and there's a double staircase just like resident evil 1 uh i just think the series is great at this in general like i think it's very good at like fan service without being like hollow for the most part um well it depends on what what they are servicing because if they're servicing ideas like this it's great if they're servicing hey everybody here's wesker and but now he's got cyborg parts it's not that's even better um and then uh one more this is from uh trainer blue uh back before there was any kind of multiplayer my friends and i would get together in a group and take turns playing resident evil 4's mercenaries mode you only got to play five minutes out of every 20 but i loved learning from watching other people play. Great mode. It is in Village, and it is also great in Village.

Highly recommend it. What else have we been playing? Go ahead, Russ. Tell me about Ynglet. Yeah. Ynglet, which is spelled Y-N-G-L-E-T, is a game made by Niflis, who is a long-time indie developer,

made a game called knit and knit stories way back when and i that i was a huge fan of this game is the the basic elevator pitches is a platformer without platforms you are kind of like a squid like microscopic organism and you're launching yourself from like puddle to puddle but you're not actually landing you just sort of like swim in each puddle and uh you're using momentum to sort of like move yourself from place to place it has um incredible music that like dynamically changes as you progress through the levels and uh it's all like hand-drawn very pretty art it's also five bucks on steam for mac and pc so kind of this looks this looks incredible i can't believe i haven't heard of this highly recommend it uh i've been playing mighty goose

which did y'all see the trailer for this no no so imagine metal slug right but you're a goose love it perfect i saw the trailer and i was yeah, that looks fun, but maybe this is just getting on that Untitled Goose game craze. I don't know how good this is actually going to be. Y'all, it is so good. It is so good. It is a truly

fantastic modern Metal Slug type of game. For people who didn't play those games on Neo Geo arcade cabinets in the 90s it is a 2d side scrolling shooter and it has this game specifically has some real um uh vlambeer the studio that did nuclear throne um and lufthauser's energy the the shooting and the percussiveness of hitting enemies feels incredible in this game. Incredible. I really, really, really, really

recommend people check it out. What's it on? It's on PC. And PC in June, I'm reading about it looks like it's also out on Switch, PS4, and Xbox One. So everything. Yeah, it's just out there. Cool. Yeah, it's just out there.

Cool. Yeah. Mighty Goose. I would like to borrow a couple minutes of our show to talk about Nier Replicant. Oh no. Can I take these Nier minutes on fucking credit

and then later I can cash in my own fantasy 14 okay that's fine that is all right it's something i mean your replicant is something it's definitely something i don't know can't stop playing it can you no i did stop playing it now at the point where like once the thing happens i was like okay i get it I'm done. I can't. I did too many side quests. Okay, how can I keep this very general? In a way that Russ kind of talked about, Plant kind of talked about,

there's two halves to this game, right? As there are to all things. Sure, yeah, that's true. But there's two distinct halves to this game. And there's a time jump in the middle. And if you don't finish stuff in the first half, when the time jump happens, you can't go back and do it, except for one thing that is fish-centric.

And I did a lot of the stuff. A lot of the side stuff in that game is interesting, and a lot of the side stuff in that game is horseshit. I mean, really, truly terrible. But because I knew I wouldn't be able to do at any point i powered through almost all the sides up in the first half and then when the time jump happens and you're kind of like not at square one but it's very different uh well not very different but it like is definitely a big change it's not just like here's the next level it's it's there's

a big shift um but i like couldn't i was too no it was too much already i couldn't keep no i got 30 seconds into that and i was like i i can't justin no no no no no let me let me sorry just let me give like one i don't know how much longer it is i have no context for that i don't know if i'm halfway through i spent so much time in the first half of the game that i got to the second part where it's a clean break. I'm like, I can't keep doing this. The first part of the game is the bad stuff. This is like playing the RPG.

You know how people are always like, oh, you got to play the first 20 hours of the RPG and then you get to the fun? You did the hard part and you've made it to the fun part. And now you're like, I'm good. I did the bad part. I might have just needed a break it was like i'm very like it's hey listen here's what i will say yeah that i did not realize before that i would fully realize now when near first came out i played i don't know a few hours of it and then got mad about fishing and then you were a young you were a young man young man thank you and then i played near

automata and i was like this is fucking great yeah what does this have to do with near though like i don't understand what i have to do play near replicant for any for an extended period of time and especially like get through this first half and the connections between the two become very it starts to feel very much of a piece with Nier Automata in a way that like I really don't and I will return to it I really want you to finish it now because you've made it to the good stuff I'm not gonna finish it

well no not all not replay it five times but I want you to get to the ending of just a playthrough because as somebody who likes Nier Automata it's really worth it you've really made it to the part where it actually is good I think you did ruin the experience

for me overall as you have with so many other things when I was about to finish the first half this little Chris plant popped up on my shoulder and was like did you get all the swords I was like fuck no I didn't you have to get them all okay I was like, did you get all the swords? I was like, fuck, no, I didn't. You have to get them all, okay?

Fuck, yes, all right, I'll go get all the swords. I told you that you don't have to do that. We learned from the listeners. They let us know about a thousand times. Yeah, but you can buy them. I'm not gonna grind out currency. I'm gonna go in and play the weird mist clone to get someone out of the dream prison.

Yo, this sounds good. That's a thing in the game, by the way. It's a very weird video game. It sounds like a good game good game i'm tempted and i shouldn't even say this out loud but i didn't really get into near automata but some of this shit sounds good maybe maybe i played near replicant first and then i go play near automata did you know that there's a resident evil sequence in near replicant because there is okay i'm gonna there's also a diablo sequence in it okay okay just there well i also i also uh i've been playing uh final fantasy 14 and i did just get to the point where i can i can do a raid so i could do the near raid now so where does that

fit in the canon it will actually that is uh has a lot more to do with the tracking guard series if you'd like me to tell you more oh I can do that maybe off-podcast. Yeah, I'm all caught up. I'm 14 now. That's how I've been spending the 20 minutes every hour and a half that I get to live my life these days. I live my life 20 minutes at a time. And I also just got my fucking Minecraft server because they just updated it. I got that one back going.

So I'll hit you boys up with the links you can get some have some fun time building some you know fortresses and that game's fucking bonkers now yeah there's like i want to play it one day but but still no circles still haven't well that's not true i found an orb yeah we'll talk about it later i put in a cheat code to make an orb so uh alright folks thank you so much for for listening to our program

you can follow us on twitter at the besties pod but the best thing you can do for us is to help with spread the word about the show word of mouth you can rate and review that stuff is all good but if you tell some people you know know, like, hey, you like video games? Here it is.

These doofuses picked the wrong Resident Evil game and said a lot of bad things. But it's still a worthwhile listen. Next week, do we know what to do? Yeah, we do. Next week is a legit A1 big release. And Ratchet and Clank Rift Apart. I did say that this was the first playstation 5 exclusive since demon souls which is totally false i apologize for that returnal obviously

was the second uh ps5 exclusive but this is the third and uh yep by all reports it's a very good game so i'm very excited to talk about it and I feel like we're going to be absolutely, I mean, forgive my language, but Ball Seep in E3 news, it's going to be piled up all around us. The big show is happening. We're going to be there live on the show floor. Of course, we're going to be there live where I got my tickets booked to LA.

I'm going to be at the Ranch One in front of the LA Convention Center. So if you want to stop by, I'll be right there. Russ will be in bikini shorts passing out monster energy samples. So check that out. Thanks so much for listening. That's going to do it for us for the besties. Be sure to join us again next time for the besties.

Because shouldn't the world's best friends be the world's best? Games. games. Besties!