The Besties - Taking On the World With Advance Wars And Beyond

Episode Date: April 28, 2023

We're taking a trip back through time with the remake of Advance Wars 1 and 2: Re-Boot Camp. Also, Griffin took a trip into the world of Tron at Disney and is here to share how he feels about being digitized.Also discussed: Meet Your Maker, Have a Nice Death, Rusted Moss, Beau is Afraid, Spirited Away: Live on Stage, Resident Evil 4 Remake.  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!

Okay, y'all, there's a new Sega game out, but it's only in Japan. And I was going to tell you about it. And then you can tell me if you think that we're ever going to get it in the U.S. Because I'm like back and forth. Should I download it off the App Store in Japan and not really understand what it's saying? Or, you know, like wait for it to get here. Okay, go ahead and tell me what it is. Okay, so it's called 404 Reset.

Oh, cool. Right? Yeah, it seems pretty cool. It um made by sega and yoko taro and like oh you love yoko taro right maker of near and uh probably other stuff yeah the other stuff he's gotta have done something so the game opens on an alternate reality let me be clear right now this isn't a bit this is a real. I was sort of bracing myself for a bit. I was holding my... I want to be very clear right now. This is a real game.

This is not a bit. The game opens on an alternate reality in which Seigo won the console wars. Oh. And they are the single most dominant pop cultural brand in the world. So I don't understand what's different like how is that different like for example you're driving in your your car right yeah you get to the the

traffic light and instead of a red light there's a robotnik okay so it's like it's like man in a high castle but say yeah and like you want to you want and you want to go, and it goes beep, beep, beep, and it turns to Sonic the Hedgehog. Okay. And Mario means go? I guess that does mean go. That actually, there's a through line, an internal logic to that

that I actually really like. Although it would be blue means go now, so you need to adapt to that. Or we can make Sonic green, like we can have fun. In Japan, blue already means go, so you're okay. to that. Or we can make Sonic green, like, we can have fun. Also, in Japan, blue already means go, so you're okay. Whoa, really? Yeah, blue and green, it's a whole thing.

Wow. Okay, so it seems pretty cool. Yeah, it's interesting. Who do you think you play as? I think I'm, like, a regular boy living in Shibuya. Sure, sure, sure. No, that's a good guess. I'm going to say Samba de Amigo.

Oh, no, that's a very good guess. No, you don't play as any of those. You play as video game franchises. Like Altered Beast. Reimagined as sexy anime girls. There it is. There's

the bit. No, it's real. There's the bit. No, it's real. There's no bit. No, it's real, but you have chosen to bring it to the table for discussion today. Right. There's lots of games where different brands of motor cars or professional sports teams are magically turned into nest cafe anime girls to then have dates and go on dates with that but we don't talk about a lot of those on the show no this seems to be breaking the mold a little bit yes you're right and honestly this isn't even as

strange as it goes like there is there's a version of this based off of just a real Japanese battleship. Cool. That they turned into, like, a cute, you know, girl. I guess, like, what does, like, the Columns girl look like? Yeah. See, you ask that. There is a Columns girl. I want to know what she looks like.

How do you interpret Columns in the form of an anime girl she's very tall oh uh columns girl i can actually tell you because i'm looking at her right now um she's my desktop background um uh she she's a one star gotcha drop sadly she has She has giant gold rings that float around her head and little jewel balls tied to those rings. Here's the thing. The art, I like it, kind of delicate. Like it's not, you wouldn't look at this and say, this is House of the Dead. You would look at this woman and say, she really enjoys Slipknot. Okay. So it's more interpretive is what you're saying right right you right you look at zevious and you're like wow

she's going to the met gala not yeah wow she's zevious okay i mean the the worst part so far is that you mentioned that's a gachapon game so i'm now infinitely hesitant what if i told you there was a character based off of fighting vipers does that turn you around i'm now infinitely hesitant what if i told you there was a character based off of fighting vipers does that turn you around i don't even know what that is chris plant thank you for bringing thanks for this chris plant update i'm gonna go play it i'm not i mean i am okay this will be a two-hander i guess yeah no i'll let you know how it goes okay bye well i just got a text from chris he said kiss fantasy star online what's that even mean we're in love crazy taxi special attack My name is Griffin McElroy, and I know the best game of the week. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant, and I know the best game of the week.

My name is Ross Froschke, and I know the best game of the week. And welcome to The Besties, where we talk about the latest and greatest in home interactive entertainment. It's a book club for video games. You're a member. We talk about all kinds of stuff here, but video games is what we will do this week. Specifically, one video game on Nintendo's Switch. But almost like two games. It's kind of a two game. Okay.

Oh, yeah. Advance Wars 1 and 2 Reboot Camp, which is a very cute name for this title, I guess. Plant, what is this fucking thing? It's a remake, re-release of the classic Game Boy Advance games, Advance Wars 1 and 2. Oh, it's also like a strategy game. It's a turn-based strategy game. I usually get a start there. We're going to talk more about it right after this quick break. oh it's also like a strategy game that's a turn-based strategy game that's that i usually

could start there is yeah yeah we're gonna talk more about it right after this quick break it's really hard without hoops it is i know thanks for the vote of confidence there though i thought i was doing pretty good that's that's fine um if you did not play advanced wars which if you're a young person you probably did not it's fucking 20 which if you're a young person, you probably did not. It's fucking 20 years old. What was the last, like when did Advance Wars 2 come out?

22 years old. Oh, I don't know when the last one came out because they dropped some on DS. It's a turn-based strategy game that started on the Game Boy Advance. Hence the name. Yeah, so it is literally 20 years old was the last one, which was Advance Wars 2 Black Hole Rising.

They didn't make shit for the DS? Oh, sorry. They did. Sorry. Dual Strike. Yeah. That came out in... I feel like there was another one too.

I feel like there were like four of these bad boys. Maybe. 2005 was when the last one came out. Okay. Intelligent Systems is the developer who, even if you don't recognize Advance Wars and did not play it, if you have played Fire Emblem, it's the same company.

And a lot of the same sort of DNA minus all of the RPG stuff. Well, not story. I guess there's a story. There's a story. A very light story in this game. Very light story. Very little talking in comparison to fire emblem which is like 90 talking 90 talking but uh this is kissing and then one

percent taking tests yeah and dancing and dancing advanced wars is like much more just about the sort of tactics is about moving your troops around a map and establishing choke points on bridges and outmaneuvering your opponent and capturing cities and doing sneak attacks on their headquarters and etc etc it's also maybe the only game well hard to say but certainly one of the only games that's ever been delayed because a war broke out it literally was supposed to come out last year and then russia invaded ukraine and they were like maybe let's not put this war game out right i thought i thought you were so the original advanced wars came out on september 10th 2001 oh i didn't know that yeah so it came out in north america first and uh and then it didn't know that. Yeah, so it came out in North America first. Wow.

And then it didn't get released in Japan for like three more years. It got released in Japan as part of a bundle that was Game Boy Wars Advance 1 and 2 is the name of it. Yeah, Game Boy Wars, right. So, yes, supposedly due to 9-11 and the ensuing... Maybe they should stop making these games. Yeah, they should. Not that they're bad. It's too high of a risk. It's funny, like, you don't think of Nintendo

being a publisher of particularly, you know, hawkish games. And I think they've actually done a lot in this remake to try to sort of distance themselves from that. The whole thing has had a huge visual overhaul instead of having this sort of like top-down pixelated view. It's like in a, it's in a wooden, everything takes place in like a wooden box,

almost like it's like a board game board and all of the heat all of the like troops that you move around are very kind of bobble heady and when the troops get shot they just go flying backwards off the screen so you know everybody's just we're just having fun it's just a

fun war it's totally fine I have no beef with it it's very funny how much everything looks like toys except for the AK-47s um i don't i don't i don't care for the i don't care for the look of this game well it's funny because it's not that far off from how the original looked it's just a 3d interpretation of the pixel art that was in the original like the original had you know the units flying off they weren't like dying in horrible ways in the original yeah of course not it was a fucking game boy advanced game of course not um

but there's something about the sort of like um tactile shiny sort of aesthetic that reboot camp goes for that i uh i'm i'm not so wild about yeah it's a it's, I kind of agree with you. It's a taste thing, and it doesn't super... It doesn't impact anything. You can play it however, but you're going to be looking at it like, music is fucking fantastic, though. Yeah.

Weirdly multi-genre, folky, jazzy sort of stuff happening that I did not expect. I don't play a lot of games on handheld with the sound on because i'm usually like doing it in a room with other people but this game kind of demands it because it's it's funky as hell i like to picture you griffin in the middle of a party and you're just in the center yeah yeah russ that's exactly what i meant that's exactly what i meant you got me i'm going to a lot of parties and whipping out the switch yeah and pulling out the Switch.

I mean, it's nice of you to keep the volume down. That's very considerate. We're dancing around talking about Advance Wars 1 and 2 Reboot Camp because I genuinely don't know that there is a ton to say. I actually have a lot to say. Oh, shit. Okay, well, go ahead. I got stuff.

You go first. Okay. Well, my stuff is like very up its own ass comparisons to Fire Emblem and why I like fire emblem more than advanced wars let's go for it because i feel like i'll have the opposite take okay good so um the thing the big difference i would say about advanced wars and there are a number of differences but like obviously at a glance they are both turn-based strategy games between advanced wars and fire emblem is the units in advanced wars are intentionally disposable

so the idea is you can and you're supposed to like send specific units essentially to die so that they can you know you are able to conquer more ground because you're using like a heavy tank to block this bridge so that the smaller units can like move in and conquer um cities and that's like a totally reasonable and encouraged strategy and there are even ways to build new units as you're playing you earn currency in a specific match and you use that currency to like generate new units it's it's a lot closer to like more of like of, like, the RTS or, like, even Civ methodology of, like, you're just, you know, kind of creating these disposable units. Right. And that's fine.

I'm not knocking that. predictive thing which is to say like so much of the game requires you to say oh because these units are on the field i have to use these units and i'll kind of like get the edge over the competition in that way yeah and there's a weird guesswork involved in like is this unit going to kill this unit because it'll tell you like oh you're gonna do like 67 damage but i don't but there's like mushiness and i'll frequently like go into a battle where it's like oh you're gonna do 95 damage and sometimes that'll fully take out the unit and sometimes it'll leave the unit with one health and the difference between one health and no health is enormous like it means you have to like spend a turn to take the rest of that unit out and they could like pull back and heal themselves and it's just a weird design choice and i don't fully

understand why it wouldn't just tell me oh for sure it's gonna be it's going to do seven right yeah it's i i i did not enjoy my time with this game which is wild because i remember really liking it on the game boy advance but i feel like this genre has come a long way baby uh in the 20 intervening years and that introducing a sort of like stochastic element to a tactical thing i'm not familiar with that word griffin you just dropped a 10 letter word on it what is yeah that's yeah i know i've i'm really got a lot of words stochastic let's go back and define stochastic like randomized like random oh it's just randomized i'm gonna use it cool take it run with it uh it's it's it's really frustrating it's really

really quite frustrating uh and then when you start to throw things in like fog of war yeah uh then like all of a sudden that guesswork that russ is talking about has like an additional layer on top of it where you don't know where the fuck anything is which is not a new concept for strategy games but like just moving a troop forward a few spaces and then it stops because it hits some invisible you know medium tank and you're like oh well he's fucking dead um bye let's see catch you later um also like every because it is not it doesn't have that sort of fire emblem rpg style stuff like every match every uh map is self-contained yeah and so it is kind of like a it's almost more of a puzzle kind of experience because you're trying to figure out the best way to fulfill each map's win conditions and then you do it and then that that one's done and it's on to

the next one uh i i don't know man it's a little less grippy yeah but it sounds like plant has sort of the opposite yeah plant drop some knowledge i mean i i enjoyed it casually you know i enjoyed it i guess for what it was which is like an old game. It doesn't feel to me, you're correct, it doesn't feel like it, you know, sits alongside any modern strategy game. It feels like a really pretty version of an old Nintendo strategy game. I thought the characters were like cute. The art is nice. The music is nice. The music is nice.

The maps, especially early on, are extremely easy, especially if you have it on the normal difficulty setting and not the classic one. And there is not a lot of story like Fire Emblem and all that stuff. So I think what I enjoyed as somebody who likes the gamey part of these games was being able to get into the action very, very, very quickly. I think I had it in my head that I would spend a lot of time like in tutorials, learning how everything works. And that was true for maybe the first half hour. But after that, it's pretty good about being like, hey, this is a level where we teach you this. You could also just not learn it and just figure it out on your own yeah like without us having to tell you and that option was great because then the levels actually became like video game levels rather

than something that nintendo does sometimes which is um this weird like call and response of now you do this and then you do it and back and forth back and forth back and forth i i what's frustrating to me about what you just said is that it does feel like there is a prescribed way to beat to like beat the levels early on at least like you you are given the the hint by nell who is sort of the your your advisor and teacher of all your tutorials and stuff of like, hey, you want me to tell you how to beat this one? Because you got to block this bridge with this dude and pop some dudes with the artillery and capture this city to get some extra resources. And then when you resupply him, he'll be – and it doesn't feel – at that point, it just feels like I'm kind of checking off the boxes and even if you don't take that advice you know if you say no i don't want to know how to beat this level it still kind of feels like there's really not a lot of there's there's another way to beat it usually but it's slow so like the example there's a map i don't know like maybe the fourth or fifth map where you get helicopters and your enemy has

jets and the trick very obviously early on is like protect your helicopters because it's a long and windy map if you want to go by road you know blow up the jets with some like anti-air defenses and then send your choppers with people and then over to like the the other team's base and capture it that would be like the way to do it uh except when i was playing my helicopters got destroyed pretty early on because i was being dumb and thought i could make more helicopters i could not i could only make more ground units so then i had easily an advantage in terms of being able to just make ground units faster than the other team so i was able to get to the other end of the map by ground it just took like 45 minutes which is not fun yes which traditionally yes i mean i enjoyed it because i liked making things you know blow up

um but when it was all said and done i was like man i really wish there had been a fast forward button halfway through when i knew unquestionably the other team could not win. And yet I just had to like play it out. Just like it. This game is fascinating to me because I love the Game Boy Advance is like, I don't think there is a platform for which I harbor more nostalgia. Like I own and mod many Game Boy Advances. I have a pretty sizable Game Boy Advance game collection. A lot of those games are classics. A lot of them hold up. Specifically, the Nintendo published

titles are across the board phenomenal. And they hold up despite their age, right? Advance Wars is interesting to me because I was enamored with it when it came out on game boy advanced because it was such an oddity and it was so it was a rare sort of genre to see on such a small platform right and so all these limitations and all of these like um you know design choices that these days seem a little bit frustrating like you could kind of gloss over those because there was nothing else like it, right? But now I had this game on my Switch competing with, you know, Octopath Traveler 2. It was competing with Resident Evil 4 on my Steam Deck and, you know, every other PC game. And so like the novelty of playing a big strategy game on a handheld does not exist anymore and it kind of made me realize that like that is in my mind what advanced wars had had going for it and now that you know

i have a computer that could launch a rocket into space uh in the palm of my hand like it's not it is kerbal space program but still it's still uh it's it's yeah it's it just seems kind of like way overly simple and um straightforward yeah i i i think if if you're looking for like the nostalgia or you whatever you know uh i guess they're not on the nintendo switch online i i think the old games are like a better experience personally, but I will say this, they were also extremely difficult. And this game does add two features that make, I think the difficulty of this much more approachable.

Thing A, Plant sort of alluded to it. There is a casual mode and I looked up the difference. Apparently casual mode gives you like more starting units when i when you start a map and that makes a huge difference in the difficulty of a map um to have like two additional tanks when normally you won't have any uh it helps a lot the other big feature that they added is a um the ability to rewind the turn and as far as i'm aware you can do that as much as you want and that a little bit alleviates i'm not saying this is like a great design solve but it's something alleviates what griffin was talking about with like the guesswork involved in finding

the best way through a map because it does suck to like you know move your best unit forward and then suddenly oh there was a fucking artillery thing hiding in this grassy and sea and you just get wiped out so you can like rewind the turn and not have to like start from total scratch so they did add some features to it but i again i think for most people even though it can be a little like talky and a little bit overwhelming in systems and stuff fire emblem is the like my go-to turn-based strategy franchise and still is and also because they're still making new ones right like i this is a fine remake yeah from a from a you know technical perspective the aesthetics

aren't my jam but you know they're they're fine uh but like these systems that this game is predicate like the gameplay systems are feel so antiquated and it like could we not have made a new yeah it's hard not to look at like uh resident evil 4 remake and dead space and stuff like that and be like there were probably little steps they could have taken to refresh this in like a pretty significant way without adding a fucking metroid prime uh remastered like you know it's there's there's a lot of precedent for that um but like i don't know what do you add to this game where you don't accidentally turn it into fire emblem yeah like i i i i do not know yeah i just want to smooch the tanks, quite honestly.

Yeah, sure. It is true. Also, while I enjoyed getting into this game earlier than it took me to get into Fire Emblem, I can easily imagine that the lack of depth would keep me away from it in the longer term. If I were a person who was ever going to play 20 hours. Yeah, it's hard. It's not motivating you to keep going. Right, right, right. me in but like can it keep me no i don't think so i feel like strategy games need some sort of um like a meta game like a progression to them even if it's

not like fire emblem you know dating people like you know x-com where you you know rank up and there is some there is some consistent strategy that is like informative of how you play the game from the start of the campaign to the end of the campaign and that's not here because each map is its own sort of like self-contained thing i feel like there's probably lots of people people are loving this game and i think that it is just a taste issue more than anything else um yeah i mean chess doesn't have a metagame chess does not have a metagame but this game ain't i would say yeah that is a um but yeah that's that's advanced wars one and two reboot camp on the nintendo switch system by. Sick. And that's that.

We're going to hop into the next half of the episode now. Justin might join us. We'll see. Oh, yeah? Yeah, we're going to try and get hoops in the mix. So we'll be right back. Okay, we're back, and we have a very special guest. Wow, what an honor.

Better late than never, Justin McElroy. I wasn't late. I was sitting here waiting for my invite waiting until uh uh hurricane advance wars and passed overhead do you know what we're talking about in the second uh part of this episode is it more oh yeah okay now i'll be honest i've stayed i've stayed pretty dark on this but this, but I'm ready to hear about it. Okay, well, I guess, Griffin, take it away. I feel like this is being sprung on me. I guess we're having a Tron talk.

I guess we're talking Tron, and we're gonna fight for the user today. I just saw a picture of Griffin seemingly having a blast. The time of his life. In the world of Tron, and I just wanted to hear more about it. Wait, this isn't the same picture of Griffin looking like he's getting nailed in the nuts. No, so I did a lot of Instagrams from my most recent Disney trip.

We went for Henry's spring break, and I did go on Frozen. Rode in the front. Folks, if you do go on the Frozen ride, front left seat, you will get wet. You will get wet on your on your privates yeah and your butt and you're gonna come off the ride and then the person working at the gift shop on your way out of the you know norway pavilion or whatever is gonna be like did you piss in your pants at disney world um no it's also weird though that as soon as griffin is in vacation mode he starts dressing like a towel boy from South Pacific.

Like, he's just full on. It's the only way to dress at Disney World is the shortest chubbies that you own and a tank top that leaves nothing to the imagination. You can say that you let it go. Yes. That you let it go? Yes. There's a very funny comment on the picture of me getting splashed on the privates in, but this is, it looks like the cold does bother him anyways.

It's very good. No, this is the new Tron light cycle run ride. And I guess there's also, there is a Tron video game. So we're going to circle back around to what the people at home love. There's a new one. There's a new one. Yes, right. So I, oh, I mean a new one. There's a new one. Yeah, yes, right. So I, oh, I mean, I will also talk about Tron 2.0, the fucking first person shooter that came out 100 years ago.

Oh yeah, that came out. Absolutely ripped ass. But no, Tron, like, what's that? You didn't get it on Steam. You can play it right now. I read at the time it did whip ass. I was playing it, not a joke, yesterday. Oh, really?

Yeah, yeah. Does it not whip ass now? It's alright So Tron Light Cycle Run The newest ride at Disney World Is it only at World or is it also in the land? I don't fucking know Is it in Disney Hong Kong? It's somewhere else

It originated Shanghai? Yeah, it originated. Shanghai? Yeah, in Shanghai. It is a thrilling roller coaster ride that you ride in motorcycle form. Do people need to know what Tron is? Is Tron too old at this point? No, we don't need to explain what Tron is.

You get digitized. You throw discs at people. People saw Tron Legacy. They listen to Daft Punk. I mean, you are in a video game effectively. Like that was the premise in the 80s. Yes. So it is fitting for this podcast.

We're not just totally coming out of left field. The Tron light cycle run ride, you ride in motorcycle form, which means you're sort of straddling a saddle and then you lean forward to grab these handlebars. And as you pull the handlebars back this like clamp comes in from the back oh my god and sort of like holds holds your back in a little bit but you are like front mounted like you are leaning forward riding a motorcycle there there has been a little bit of trouble recently with um uh thick kings and queens yes with thick chunky calves yeah like myself who have been unable to fit into the regular car there is a a more accessible car that you can use but by and large

um and it like you know blasts off and you you do a quick sort of loop outside it like goes outside of the ride and then you go back in for like a uh you know a speed race uh okay but it's i guess i have so many questions so first of all it's not like a vr it's like a roller coaster no vr no headset no no you know 3d glasses no nothing you just okay and secondly flags i feel like going outside is the total opposite weird man it's so weird it's like you go they do all this stuff being inside the the ride ambiance which is like you know a big deal at disney world is top notch kick ass there's no like it's not like guardian to the galaxy which is great but like you know you walk through a bunch of rooms and have to listen to chris pratt you know talking

about jefferson starship or whatever the fuck yeah um and or the avatar ride where like you're walking past navi floating in big test tube it's just like this room is dark with blue lines of light in it and that's all you really need to know and then it's like becoming digital and you lean forward and it's like get ready to jump forward on your light cycle and then you go outside and you like see a bunch of sweaty people in fanny packs and it's like this is not but then you go back maybe it's like an analysis of how much gaming technology has advanced oh interesting then created a realistic disney world within tron um and then you you zip back inside. It is very short. It feels like it needs kind of a third act, sort of. I don't know if you guys have done any of the new Disney rides,

but Guardians of the Galaxy has a lot of preamble, and then it has sort of a roller coaster segment, and then all of a sudden the car segment and then you're all of a sudden the car turns and you're zipping around a planet and watching you know this giant titan stomping through space and then you're back in another roller coaster segment then you're traveling through time like there's a lot of stuff you do in this one it's like you have to go through these eight checkpoints and as you go through each one it counts it off and then like 55 seconds later the ride is over uh which is it seems a little bit short.

All that said, it's really fucking fun to zoom forward really fast in a motorcycle while the Tron Legacy soundtrack is playing behind you. Do you get the sense of like the walls from light cycle racing? That's a big thing. Oh, yeah, the walls. Not really at all. No, it's which seems like a missed opportunity you are on the fictional blue team everybody's on the blue team and occasionally you will see orange team like video virtual writers you know smashing into shit um which is yeah orange team is russia in this scenario yeah um it's it's very cool.

It's very exciting. We did a fast pass for it, which you can buy sort of a la carte, which I did. If I had to wait in a long line for the ride that lasted less than a minute, probably wouldn't be so wild about it. It's two minutes, but- Are they selling Aurobes in the gift shop?

Some of the gift stuff is wild. Did you check any of that out? I've seen pictures of it. No, we were sort of, so Rachel and I, you know, we had the boys and they were too little to ride it. And so we kind of had to split up

and go one at a time and then rush back to where the other people were. But looking through the windows of the gift shop, looked pretty tight. Because it seems like a light up Aurobe would be like the best

tron thing you could have yes just two the ride is two minutes from like when it starts moving to when it stops but half of that is maneuvering into the intro and exit of the it feels it feels very very short it's thrilling but um i think i wanted a little bit more out of it can we talk about the tron video game though because i'm more interested yeah as far as i'm aware none of us have played it yeah yeah i don't think we're gonna talk a whole lot about it i think we're gonna talk about it existing it does exist it's made by uh bithell games mike bithell and his uh crew it's a visual novel set in the Tron universe. And it's only a couple of hours.

So we will play it, presumably before the end of the year. It's $14.99. I mean, I will play it, I guess is what I should say. And then I don't know if anybody else... Tron is back! In a big way. Big!

Okay, wait. So what is up with Tron? as a very idea of disney spending money on this they have two movies the last one came out like what over a decade ago yeah and yet they keep making more stuff that's like not cheap you know there's only so much real estate for for a theme park ride. And this is like a, this is a, you know, top ticket ride. This is an e-ticket, baby. Like they're putting their money behind Tron.

They have a new Tron video game coming out. It's a weird fit. I'm just curious, like why? Like, are we going to see just a bunch of Tron movies at some point? There might be a Tron endgame. I don't know about that. I will say that it is a welcome addition to Magic Kingdom, which specifically Tomorrowland. Oh, yeah.

There's not a ton to do. This is not a Disney podcast, although it probably certainly could be. No, but let's get into it. Tomorrowland, man, we need to talk about that. Oh, my God. It's a real problem. What have I done yeah it needs it needs a little bit of help uh how do you make a tomorrow when the the future keeps changing every day talk to mtv same through um anyway i don't really want to talk about trauma anymore i thought we were talking about tomorrowland i was going to throw it to

hoops and be like you know do you think it think it should go back to being 1950s space age nostalgia? Or do you think that they need to do something fresh? Yeah, it's a big question. I don't think I have time to properly explore it here, but let's keep on moving forward, you know? Both in the show and in time.

Tomorrow. Yeah, for sure. Tomorrow. I think we have a bunch of games that people have been playing that they do quite enjoy. Yeah, let's get Honorable Mentions. So let's dive into Honorable Mentions. Who wants to go first? I have two that I've been playing.

May I? Because I got two at the same time, and I've been annoying because now I'm trying to push two games on people at once, but they're both really, really good. The first, Stephen Swann talked about last week on the show it's called meet your maker has anybody else he like i downloaded it i haven't i haven't played it yet that's just to re re uh revisit uh because he did last week um it's like if mario maker had was doom you know sure is basically the best the analogy. You're making levels. You're getting resources.

It's just very, it's a lot more fun and iterative to build a base than I thought it would be. I didn't think I would get into that part of it. Basically, you're building these levels that have a MacGuffin that players are trying to steal. It's fairly methodically paced. Not really like Doom. It looks more like Doom, but it's like a, it's almost like a first-person puzzle shooter. It's much more like trap heavy. The enemies are there you're not getting like gunfights with it's more about like pacing and timing and aiming and stuff um and but you're always going into

player edited levels player created levels and then those resources you take back to your levels and so you can upgrade your abilities but also your ability to trap people in your stage um you're kind of forced into having like a small level at first um and so it kind of sneaks up on you like that was pretty easy to create like a hallway with some traps in it that led to the gen mat that the genetic material that i was trying to defend um and then as you kill a couple people it starts to get like it grants you a little bit more space to play with and a little bit more like resources to to mess around with and so you can just sort of gradually iterate which is a lot i i'm i'm into a lot more um than than i thought i would be and it's also great

because you can watch replays of people coming to your base and yeah that is cool traps that's like it's so satisfying um that's called meet your maker the other one i i would love to talk about longer at some point um after some more people check it out but it's called have a nice death and it is a fairly recent release um i i feel like i'm just like this plus this is a very lazy way of describing games but as an elevator pitch it's mechanically not unlike

Hollow Knight you're a little grown reaper who realizes people have been dying too fast and it's creating too much paperwork for you so you're trying to stop these demons who have gone rogue and are wiping people out so you don't have as much work to do. But mechanically the combat is very much.

It kind of feels like hollow night to me. It's a small character and a lot of different variety in the like sorts of weapons that you're using. But the structure is like Hades where you're taking two weapons with you. In addition to your scythe, which you always have two different weapons or spells that change on every run and you're unlocking new ones as you go for for uh solid performance um and it also looks uh just amazing so um those are two that i've been really enjoying meet your maker and have a nice death i hope you three will check out a couple of them because i'd

like i'd love to talk more about them especially have a nice death i think it kind of looks like the art style kind of remind it kind of reminds me of little inferno remember oh yeah inferno that like i forget it was the name of the company that made that but it was like oh yeah remember the gate where it's just like the whole mechanic is burning stuff in this flyer tomorrow corporation Corporation. Tomorrow Corporation. It looks sort of like their cute dystopia, but it's beautiful. It's gorgeous. You have to see it. It looks like the Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy.

Yeah. Oh, wow. I can't believe you had the name of that just like on the tip of your tongue. You know, I've got a repository just sitting there. It's quite a pull. Anybody else? Yeah, I've been playing a lot of Resident Evil 4.

Like, a lot of it. I had not finished the game when we talked about it originally, and now I have finished it and gone back for seconds because I'm hungry. And then I finished my seconds, and now I am going back for thirds because this game, the speedrun possibilities for this game are very exciting. And very entertaining.

There's a lot of stuff to unlock. Right now I'm doing a hardcore, just new game run. No new game plus. No infinite ammo hand cannon here. Just me, and a bunch of zombies zombies and five and a half hours to beat the whole freaking thing um man that's a good man that's a good game uh it has it has jumped up right to my my goatee spot i think for the for the year so far um which i say it's definitely up there which i say a couple weeks before a new Zelda game comes out, but for now I'm just kind of living in bliss with Resident Evil 4.

It's so good on Steam Deck. It works so well. What do you play at, 40 FPS? No, I think I do 60. Full 60, wow. But I turn a lot of the settings down. You know, I've got to have, you know, when i'm doing you know quick turns trying to no scope the worm out of a gerador's back it's like i need that fucking i need that that refresh

rate to be up there you know you use that egg strat on salazar of course you gotta use the extra on salazar yeah you can't afford a rocket launcher which no no scope the worm this is just a real beautiful collection of words. Yeah. It's fun. I've never played a Resident Evil game on like a high difficulty. Yeah. And like smashing my head into some of those combat encounters, like the house defense probably took me a couple hours of retrying.

And I feel like I can tell you all of the like major combat sequences uh in in that game from memory because i've had to try and try and try again to uh complete them on this most recent run yeah i've played a lot of village on on like all that high difficulty stuff and it it does make you like very intimately familiar with every like all that high difficulty stuff and it it does make you like very intimately familiar with every like enemy that appears and every like hard point yeah yeah that seems dope i would like to go back and play also just news update for everyone uh peglin just came out on ios and there it is got that downloaded and been playing that a little bit too. That was the Peggle RPG. It was the Peggle RPG, yes.

Yeah. Plant? Yeah. I saw two movies I was going to tell you about. One I don't think I can recommend, but I just... Boa's Afraid exists and it's three hours. And if you don't have anxiety and you're like hey i really care about my friends who have anxiety i wonder what that's like well you can pay like 18 and go find out on imax for three hours it's in imax it certainly is wow um i don't

recommend seeing it but i know a lot of people love it. A lot of one stars and a lot of five stars. It's so fun how Ari Aster has sort of, like, gained a certain reputation. Like, his films have a certain consistency that I think a lot of people are expecting. What else is it that they are not getting? Well, the difference between this and, like, yeah, Hereditary and Midsommar. Yeah. Horror movies.

Right. This is far scarier than either of those movies. But it's not like a horror movie in that sense. I did not go into it thinking, you know what? I'm going to get that. I do go into it thinking I'm going to get a movie and not like a stack of someone's like therapy notes from the past two decades. But I got it but i got it i got it but the the thing that i do recommend to people because i think there will be one more screening of this by the time this episode comes out spirited away live on stage oh yeah stage show version of it and they filmed it and i think that there's like there are only

like four nights that they're showing it that fathom events type of, you know, bullshit. But you if you can see it, you should go see it on a big movie screen. Because, wow, is it really cool to see live theater in a movie theater? Even if it's not live and even if it's not real people, it's still really, really work. Sadly, the last screening is tomorrow. No, no, no, no, no, no. The last screening is May 2nd. There's April 23rd and 25th is with one actress

and then April 27th and May 2nd is with a different actress. Oh, cool, okay. Now, do any of these have introductions by Griffin McElroy? Because I only go see five of the events where Griffin McElroy is doing the introduction. No, I did do it for the anime Spirited Away. I did introduce that one, because i only go see five of the events uh where griffin mccrory is doing the introduction no i

did do it for the anime spirit away i didn't use that one but this is that's a huge down like that's a huge loss look at just why did they pick you to have you have you yet pieced together while why film expert griffin mccrory was selected i mean it's one of my favorite it's one of my favorite movies of all time. Yeah, but a lot of people like movies. Like a lot of people like it. Guys, shut my fucking ass. I don't know what to tell you.

No, I'm happy it happened. Sure. I think I would like the movie better if you were there. I get it. Thank you. I appreciate that. Even if you have no passing interest in this, look at some of the production shots of this stage play.

It's fucking amazing. It's absolutely incredible. Also, it is coming to streaming services in July, I think. You'll get to watch it, but man, like I said, seeing this on a really large screen is super cool. I also just want to, I just want to celebrate this. Anything we can do to make like,

I know it's video, but like live theater, more accessible and bring like new relevant live theater to as many people as possible. Sure. I know a lot of people get up in arms about filming theater and, and, and a lot of people who live in areas where there's infinite theater are very

possessive about making sure other people can't see that theater infinite theater that still costs 300 a ticket so none of them can go and see it anyway yeah you know yeah i oh man this is like uh my tomorrowland thing i can go on this one forever but yes support theater that is filmed it's good and much cheaper I have a video game to talk about it as we close out the section it is a game called Rusted Moss

it is only on thank you it is only on PC that's it. Yeah. Weston Moss is his character. We have fun here.

Thank you, William. It is only on PC slash Steam. It is a 2D Metroidvania. I believe I talked about it briefly because the demo was released as part of a Steam Next Fest like six months ago. The full game is out now. The big differentiator obviously

we talk about a lot of 2d metroidvanias on this show the big differentiator here is you basically have a bungee cord grappling hook and you can use that at any moment in the game with 360 aiming you could shoot it anywhere you want and it allows you to basically sproing your way through a giant metroidvania world and so the whole game is built around the physics of both the grappling hook and also like like you can rocket jump for example and if you shoot out your grappling hook at the last second such that it's like uh extremely taut you can use the elasticity of the grappling hook to basically pull you back up into the air and do

all sorts of crazy flips and shit. It is excellent and wholly creative. I feel like there's a lot of Metroidvanias where the movement mechanics are kind of second fiddle to just like walking around and finding new areas and finding new upgrades. Here the movement mechanics

are like 100% the and uh i've been like loving it i played for a very brief moment i was really struggling with that mechanic feeling uh good to me and i did use mouse and keyboard as recommended yeah um it was just like the physics of it were kind of overwhelming yeah it is used to it it is a little intimidating at first because it lets you fuck up pretty hardcore like you will screw it up and you'll shoot the grappling hook it and it'll just be like slack and you'll just be dangling there but you kind of have to just wrap your head around like how it works which takes yeah it could take an hour before you like it clicks for you and then once you really wrap your head around it like the satisfaction of nailing that interaction is tremendous justin mentioned it does recommend

mouse and keyboard for what it's worth i was able to beat the whole game on steam deck using controls on steam so i i don't know necessarily if it was easier or harder but i do know that um there are accessibility settings so like you can turn on auto aim for example if you want to make the like combat a little easier but you are you know i was able to do it again i don't know how much easier it is yeah let's not erase that part what you're a pro gamer really excellent games you're good games great i mean i turned on auto i turned on auto aim i thought it was i just thought you i just thought you saw that as you drove past it laughing no no no i actually used pro gamer land

i actually used it uh and i was appreciative of it being there um yeah again it's not for everyone it is challenging and can be a little intimidating again with the movement stuff but i thought it was dynamite so that's uh rusted moss any other things i think we did it i think we did it i want to thank the following people for writing reviews for the besties on apple podcast people who wrote reviews are wreck your shit with math dort munch man and j nub thank you for writing reviews for the besties on apple podcast thank you to everyone else who has shared the show or written reviews or talked about it or hell clicked on a link or went to one of our sponsors because you hear one of our ads and you're like oh i want to support them just like go to that website with the code and all that stuff

and that actually helps us a lot too so we appreciate it um what are we doing next week we're actually gonna talk about star wars jedi survivor yeah david they've assured me that the game will be out on friday uh and so we will play it and uh so this coming friday you know the friday after you listen to this we will have to figure out it's the one after this one if you look at them in a row you know what's weird about this game the franchise is called star wars jedi yeah that's weird it is weird the colon's in the weird spot yeah you know anyway that's what my doctor said um hey how about i recap really quick oh yeah please these are the games we played advance wars one and two reboot camp tron the ride at disney world meet your maker have a nice death rusted moss

resident evil 4 spirited away live on stage and the film bow is afraid which let me just tell you it has a character named birthday boy stab man great hey now i'm thinking maybe yeah see i knew i could i know i could change your mind uh that's gonna do it for us um the besties very short address again next week for the besties because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games Besties! besties