The Besties - The Amazing Indie Games of the Summer

Episode Date: July 16, 2021

Looking for something new to play this summer? Might we interest you in some incredible indie games? This week, we spotlight Chicory, Overboard, Phantom Abyss, Demeo, and more! Plus, we have a very special guest in the second half! 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!

I think I'm going to be eSports professional. Hmm. Yeah, I figured it out last night. I felt like this podcasting career trajectory sucks, and it's heading in the toilet. I think we can all agree the bubble's about to pop. The bubble has popped already. It probably did pop already.

And so eSports is looking like the next thing for me, and what I settled on was Yeti and My Spaghetti. Mmm. Picked it up last night put in a few rounds this morning and really really like won in a way that made my son not want to play yeti in my spaghetti against me so you're kind of developing a latent talent, latent life. Yeah, for removing spaghetti pieces from the bowl without making the Yeti fall into it. And what I did, I would set these devious little traps for him where I would remove pieces of spaghetti

until there were only four pieces of spaghetti holding the Yeti aloft in a way that was just impossible for him to survive the game. And I feel like that kind of cunning is gonna really turn some heads on the circuit. So you guys are just gonna pretend like there's not a new Space Jam movie out. Well, let's talk about this.

It doesn't look very good. Oh man, guys. The worst part about having kids, and there's a lot of bad stuff, but is watching a trailer for a movie like Space Jam and knowing, like, I'll be watching this film. I know I'll watch the movie. I'll know I'll see the Space Jam.

Because if it wasn't for that, I'd be in front with the protesters saying, like, Space Jam 1 didn't need this. Do you all know about the history of space jam sequels do you all know about what they've tried to get off the ground for space jam sequels this is too this is too long for a cold open i don't care we got it like i want to i want us to really be able to talk about this stuff in a safe place maybe that was the beginning it just started here yeah okay so there's i mean we got spy jam with jackie chan was in the works but that one never really came to be um we got uh oh boy there was going to be a a jeff gordon

was going to play uh the the sort of michael jordan character in a space jam sequel anybody want to guess what the name of that no it's gonna be yeah no race jam but they didn't do that one that's probably for the best race jam is a is a pretty loaded title challenge let's see skate jam with tony hawk was discussed that one never came out a golf centered film with tiger woods i don't even think that one got far i guess they were gonna call that one golf jam if i was to guess or maybe space golf the first one's not called basketball jam that's a great that's an excellent point oh man we need frustic back so bad i miss so bad i'm missing so much My name is Justin McElroy and I know the best games of the month. My name is Griffin McElroy and I know the best games of the month.

My name is Christopher Thomas Plant and I know the best games of, I don't know, the summer? We still are missing our friend who is starting to feel a little luxurious. If I can say this sort of sojourn from playing and talking about video games is starting to feel a little self, you know? Yeah, a little self, you know. A little decadent, thank you.

Yeah, no. As somebody with a three-month-old who was very recently in Russ's shoes, and in many ways still is, I should sympathize with him. But the sausage has to the people still need to eat sausage people have got to eat sausage let's break it down for one second before we talk about okay real quick besties ladies and gents at home interactive entertainment we're going to do

kind of a roundup there's several of us here we're going to do this russ fresh dick has been on paternity leave here's what i want to say here here's the thing i know russ is still playing video games right yeah because we get the updates from russ so what we are what what what this extended paternity leave is uh uh insinuating is that every week russ looks at the the mother of his child and says, you can't be without me, Russ Frushdick, for 45 minutes. You can't handle this without me, Russ Frushdick. Also, people think having kids is hard, but I don't know if y'all got this one.

I'm opening up my text message because he sent me a photo, and it is him playing a game that we cannot talk about yet on the Nintendo Switch. And his child, I'm not lying here, is feeding him grapes already. It's outrageous. We missed Rush very much. And the grapes aren't even cut in half,

which is like 101. He said he'll definitely be back for the Halo Infinite episode. So we've got to look forward to it. We wanted to take a moment to look back at, you know, the absolutely like a bounty of indie games that are just always sort of like slightly below the surface of the, the big triple a releases.

I, we got, we had a, a big swath of like recommendations from people of all these great games that I just like had not heard of. And I realized that like a lot of the mechanisms I have for like finding more under the radar stuff is like, I don't know.

They, they broken down over time. Twitter used to be a good place for that. I, I have for like finding more under the radar stuff is like I don't know they they've broken down over time Twitter used to be a good place for that I it's not that anymore uh so we want to try to to sort through and find some cool stuff to to chat about maybe recommend let's let's break down our first title because it's something that we talked about last week and I think we've all sort of spent a lot of time with at this point which is overboard yes since we already talked about we could probably be a little bit quicker in this one it's basically a it's from oh griffin homie it is ankle ankle yes uh we did 80 days and i think a couple other sort of games sort of like this. It's really not like any game I've played before, though.

I mean, it is definitely, there's definitely a visual novel quality to it, but it's very moment-to-moment interactive and sort of time-based in a way that I wouldn't typically think of a visual novel. You know, it almost kind of reminds me of like, if you, it's not really like this at all, but it is in the spirit of like the non-re game type things where it's like, there's a lot of interactivity,

but it is still like mainly a story that's playing out. You play a woman named Villainess who has murdered her husband on a cruise ship. And she is definitely the bad guy of the story. There is no, there is no like, yeah, no, maybe she, no, no, no. You murdered your husband in cold blood and you are trying to get away with it. The way that plays out is you're on a ship with several other passengers and you are trying to engineer circumstances that make it so that at the end of the

day, when there's a big sort of like parlor room uh reveal you are not fingered for the crime and that could be that could come from seemingly limitless different right sources of aid right so there's people on the ship that'll accuse you you can maybe win them to your side you could knock them out with sleeping pills that you find you could uh you know. Murder them also. Murder them. Like, you could knock them off. Yeah, there's a way to, I think I saw in the achievements, there's a way to, like, murder everyone.

Yes. On the boat, wildly. The achievements are great, and I feel like are the smartest thing about the game. thing about the game uh you you loop every time that you uh you know reach the end of the day and are jailed or you know reach any of the the endings of the game uh and whenever you start a new loop if you discovered like a lead or a an objective it will appear in like a little checklist so it gives you some guidance like oh this this guy is hiding something in his room you should figure out what that is uh and then you can use that information it checks it off the list once you finally figure it out and then you use that to like justin said engineer that

perfect loop where you get away with it um yeah for for people who don't normally play visual novels i really really really recommend you give this a chance anyway. A thing that I wasn't talky reedy uh is i don't know take away like the the distractions of a open world game where you would walk around in like third or first person you can still do a lot in this game like you can break into people's rooms you can steal things there uh that kind of like classic sequence of trying to get somebody to drink poison yeah is in the game in a really really fun way um i was just really caught off guard by how interactive they managed to make the game just through text yeah it's it's i don't know that visual novel is a good way of describing this game it is it is an adventure game with a great a great deal of reading in it uh it it runs on a clock and it is kind of puzzle boxy in that sense because each of

the characters on this ship have schedules that they stick to and if you learn their schedules that's an incredibly powerful tool for you to put together these these perfect runs uh just just as an example you uh one of the clues there's so many things that can give you away any inconsistency between your testimony from one character to the other will be brought up in the parlor room scene and will get you get you caught um but one one piece of evidence i don't want to get like wicked into you know spoilers because i think it's a fun thing to figure that stuff out for yourself um but you you lost an earring on the deck last last night when you murdered your husband uh and your earring is still up there and i kept i i could not for the life of me figure out how to

kind of get around that because there's a character that finds that and then will lord it over you and there's a few different ways of sort of dealing with that character and getting them to not you know sink you with this this damning piece of evidence but one thing you can also do is when you wake up in the morning before you do anything else you can rush up to the deck and get there before them and you have a very limited window of time to do it but the first time i managed to pull that off i was like oh okay so that's that is how you spend your time is such a an important decision because that shuts off other opportunities you know there's characters now that aren't in places i need them to be but i can just piece by piece put together this this this uh this this run where i get away scot-free uh and this could be

really repetitive but the game super respects your time in two key ways one uh when dialogue goes across the screen it just goes quickly um the game does expect you to read relatively fast though you can go into the options and adjust that but the other thing is each time you start a scene if you've done it before you can click effectively fast forward and repeat all the answers that you had done previously so say you got pretty far but then got to a point where you wanted to branch in one run you could go back and effectively fast forward through the game up until that point yes you can also restart a scene once each each uh each run so if you like mess up something in like a a scene with a character and uh i was trying to smother somebody and i accidentally clicked the wrong prompt after like

smothering them for a while and like just ran out of the room and they sat up and were like what the fuck was that i was like oh the idea you get it i was murdering you there's more where that came from um it's it's it is it's fantastic it's like um i don't know games of this scale are so enticing to me right now uh it is just a little handheld, little Rubik's Cube, just a very dense and very satisfying game. Yeah, and there's not a, I should make clear, there's not a best, there's not like you finish it. Like I got through with like sort of the best overall result,

but like there's so many different ways you can achieve that result. It's very cool. There's also some bonkers. I got one ending that was absolutely banana cakes. Like in a way that is, I do not want to describe because I want people to stuff. It is on par with the Silent Hill UFO ending. Like it gets, this game gets weird on par with the Silent Hill UFO ending. Like, it gets...

This game gets weird. There's... The devil is in it, I think. It's a good game. Yeah. But we've discussed that at length. I want to hear about Chicory. I'm guessing Plant put that on here.

Yeah. Have either of you played it? I've not played it. I downloaded it. I played a little bit of it. Okay. Then I'm going to help you here because the first hour of this game, uh i've not played it i downloaded i played a little bit of it uh okay then i'm gonna i'm gonna help you here because the first hour of this game quite slow and maybe that's kind of what i was running into yeah so for uh people who are curious uh 2d game you play as a cute little puppy um who

lives in a world full of artists and there was a famous artist named chicory who was the master wielder who basically is the great artist of the time and your character was their janitor um and one day uh chicory has locked themselves in their room and the master paintbrush is just sitting out there and chicory is like well i guess i'll like help and take this is just sitting out there. And Chicory is like, well, I guess I'll help and take this and just go out into the world and do what I can until Chicory is ready to take it back. And so begins effectively a Zelda game without much combat. The world at this point has lost all of its color.

So with this paintbrush, you move around with WASD, or WASD, and then you use your mouse to paint the entire world. You can paint any object in the world. You can paint the people, you can paint the objects. You go around collecting things, solving stuff, gaining new kind of paintbrush powers, which is where the Zelda comparison comes in. That helps you, you know, like get into new areas uh and further explore things and eventually there is some combat there are these like extremely creepy boss fights but uh here's the reason to play it the story is delightful um especially if you suffer from anxiety or you've ever wanted to create anything and worried that you uh suck at it um because really it is a story about the expectations of being an artist so the

great example of this is your character it's named after whatever you input as your favorite food so my character's name is pasta which is great because my real dog's name is pasta um pasta is like going around doing um her thing right and some people she meets they're like wow i am so glad to meet you i have donuts and like you're an artist so like could you just like design donuts and you're like i yeah, sure, I guess. Why not? But then you'll also meet people who are, like, at an art school. And they're like, hey, I've been trying to be an artist my entire life. You know, you come around.

You're a janitor. You don't even want it. You pick up this thing, and everybody thinks you're so good. Like, that's just not fair. thing and everybody thinks you're so good like that's just not fair um which is a weirdly um real conversation about like how art works and how celebrity works and how fickle it all is and the whole game is this it is like just over and over and over dealing with the different types of people who are in the arts community the different types of people who are in the arts community, the different types of creators, what their expectations are. One of my favorite bits in the game is you come across your sister

who has been in art school for a long time. And your parents are like, wow, you're the master wielder? Like, we always thought your sister would be that. You know, she's been going to art school. And you talk to her and she's like oh no like that would suck like being that person would utterly suck i i would not want that much pressure and responsibility i just like making things and like not having those expectations on me um it's really it's just a really sweet game um and also beautiful like the just it is one of those games i can see why

again why if you don't have a lot of time or you can't kind of convince yourself to just like to go at your own pace it might not be for you because what i've enjoyed is just doodling like stopping whatever i'm doing and coloring in the world like a coloring book um i think that is kind of when it's best when you you kind of go at it in a leisurely pace so that's that's like a long summary of it i really do think both of you should give it just maybe you know get past that first hour and see if it still clicks with you it looks like my jam on honestly i i i have designs on playing this at some point yeah i i i found what i played pleasant enough i just didn't it it was moving a little slow and there's a lot of

yeah and it does speed up i i will i will say that after the first hour you start getting more abilities and powers and you can start designing your own brushes and stuff like that and once that gets going, I think it kind of finds its cadence. It's also very generous. Like there's just, there's gift boxes everywhere. They give you new outfits or new brushes. So you're kind of constantly being rewarded just for exploring.

I'm so excited to talk about this next game. Yeah. Because it is, it's a heck of a thing. It's called Phantom Abyss. You mentioned it last week, which got me up on it. What did you think, Griff? It's good. It's a lot of fun.

I played it to the point where I felt like I had gotten what I was going to get out of it and uh and there's probably that's probably not a fair summary of it but it's it i had a great deal of fun with it while i was in those those early stages so it is a gosh how to describe did i tell you guys about it after the show or on the show last week i feel like it must have been on the show right i don't know i think it's worth re-describing so yeah so it's a uh first person uh run based uh platformer i guess you'd say yeah because there's not really like enemies to speak it's it's it's It feels a bit Mirror's Edge-y, just a touch. Mirror's Edge is not a bad comparison.

It's more like if Mirror's Edge and Spelunky got together and had a family, this would be the child. You are navigating these trap-filled environments with basically just your trusty whip to help you get around. Your whip is cool. It feels very... You know, video game whips are always a question mark. What are we going to get with this one? whip uh is cool it feels very you know video game whips are always a question mark what are we going to get with this one this one is a good whip uh it lets you connect to any point basically and uh catapult yourself up towards that point and you're basically trying to make a run through this sort of like trap filled dungeon collecting um keys and

treasure and gold and and stuff that you can use to get new whips and upgrade your whip and make it deeper into the dungeon. The sort of really neat hook of, of this game. I mean, it not the only hook because obviously the, the basic game design is just fun to play, but there is this idea that each,

because each level is procedurally generated, each level will be beat only once by one person on Earth. So if you're playing a dungeon, so if you play one and you die, someone else gets to take a chance at it. And if you are that next person, then you see the ghosts of everyone who has tried before and failed rushing alongside of you um and it's really fun and interesting because for one you can like it's sort of like a time trial if you know that that person is going to fuck up right like how much can you take away from like a ghost like that if you know that they're gonna die and it's so good when you watch somebody beef it you're like you fucking dink and then you jump and miss the next whip jump and fall to your death yeah the exact same jump yeah that that aspect of it is very is very cool it's also very funny to log into a level and you're like 22 people have died have died here and you're like well there's no absolutely no way i'm

clear in this um or if you get one that no one has played, then it feels a little bit more hopeful. At least for me, who's like not particularly great. I will say that it is, and I don't, it is just a little bit, there were just a few too many times where it just felt a little bit finicky in terms of, I feel like I did that. There's a, for instance, there's a,

this is, was my like sort of chief issue with it. There's like a, um, role that you can do. If you fall for a long distance, there's like a role you can do split second before you hit the ground that will remove any damage.

And I felt like the timing on that was like kind of weird. It felt a lot of times like pretty ungenerous. Although I'm sure with a game like this, it is calculated down to the nanosecond, but it felt like- It just didn't feel, yeah. It just didn't feel right. It's also, yeah.

And there also is a real sense of, and this is kind of the fun of it, but it feels like very uneven in terms of the difficulty, where like sometimes you'll hit something that sucks from the moment you log in, like from the moment you get in, there's spinning blades and gas

and a bunch of different like traps. And sometimes there are huge complex traps, and this is a kind of hilarious, huge complex traps that you can just sort of like not do because it's like, sometimes the solution is walk some to the right and then jump and then you're past it and you don't have to go do. And if you're not aware of it, sometimes you'll just run headlong into these traps and start trying to

navigate them when you can just like literally go around, like not even mess with them. Plant, did you try? Yeah think i think i think everybody's gonna rip this game off in like the next five years this it feels like one of those ideas that um you know it's it's clearly building off of dark souls with you know the kind of like phantoms uh that you can call for to see how other people did things in forts of horizon where you know you have asynchronous multiplayer with cars zipping around but what i think is really brilliant about this game is you know how everybody just plays a game on like one screen and then watches playthroughs on another like it is guides now or they watch

you know twitch streamers to see how they approach certain things. What's so inspired here is they just built that into the game. Like you don't need a guide for this game, even though all the levels, you know, you couldn't really make one anyway, because the levels are procedurally generated. Instead, you use people's mistakes to actually learn how the game works. And I think, like, maybe this is a way to make something like Spelunky more accessible, would be a mode like this, where you could see other people playing it in real time and learn how the world works without having to learn by dying. I was, like, I was really surprised how fast i learned the dynamics this game just by like you know always staying a few steps behind the phantoms seeing what they did you know you don't

they don't have to have a lot of tutorial explanations because you know they go and whip you know uh the tutorial is mercifully short in in this yeah you you can you can learn just by watching and i i think that i would love to see i don't think i need to see like every game make this the heart of the game but having this as some sort of like accessibility option or tutorial option would be really nice um and much you know cleaner and more polished and i don't know makes it feel like a community um then the usual you know here's the log you have to duck under um yeah i i i think just as a pure idea it rules i do agree that i will probably not play a whole lot more until it gets another few patches because i do think that they can they can fine-tune how it

feels because yeah i i had the same issue with the the role i also just felt like there were a number of times where i thought i could whip something to launch myself up there and then it didn't work and that is pretty frustrating yeah um yeah for a game like this you you kind of need that shit to work and feel like it is working 100 of the time um but yeah it's a it's a it's a neat one um hey speaking what's this last game dimio i mentioned it i i think a while ago when i was talking about sort of vr stuff this is a currently a vr only but they are working on a cross play uh just pc version uh and it is a virtual tabletop game uh that when you are in vr uh you can sort of play from the top down like you are you know hovering over an actual table and playing a sort of tactics RPG with three buddies.

But you can also sort of zoom in and scale it down so that it feels like you're standing amongst the pieces. Demio is a... I feel like it is bizarre that there are not more games like this, which is to say like a simulation of a tabletop RPG, not necessarily a full-blown role-playing sort of experience, but more of a like fourth edition tabletop battle tactics style thing. Very hero quest-y, if that resonates with y'all uh it's weird to me that there aren't more games like this and demio not only is cool because it is in vr and you get that that

sort of experience with it it's just a really well-made sort of tactics rpg uh you play as one of four i think four classes uh and and they're your pretty sort of standard, you know, fighter, mage, thief, ranger classes. And you have action points you can spend each turn. You have a movement you can take each turn. You have different cards that you can play each round, which cost a certain amount of action points, and they are class-specific. Some of those cards recharge every turn, like the Wizard. If you play as the Wizard, it has a zap spell that you can use every single turn, and it will stun one of the enemies on the board. But every time you accrue a certain amount of experience points, you get another sort of powerful class ability you also collect gold and treasure as you go through

the dungeons and you can spin those between rounds uh to to purchase more cards and the the interface for all that stuff is so sick like on your right wrist almost like a wristwatch you can see the turn order uh and if you like turn one of your hands upwards all the cards just kind of fan out and appear in your hand and you just sort of grab them and slap them down on the board like you're playing fucking yugioh uh it's it's just it's just a really really good well-designed uh tactics rpg and then once you are sort of playing it with you know the one of the strengths of of the you know any vr headset really is that it has headphones and mic built into it so that if you're playing a multiplayer game, pretty much everybody's talking

and the player base for this game is like into it in a way that has made it very approachable to get into it. Like my first game, I was so nervous. Cause like, I didn't know what the fuck I was doing. doing uh but everybody was like oh yeah okay so you want to make sure that you uh don't go into rooms by yourself don't open up a door to reveal a new chamber at the end of your turn like very very helpful and very cool um and it has like enough sort of hero moments you can get like critical hits and sort of turn the tide of a battle or draw a clutch card that sort of saves the the fight uh it's it's just it's just fantastic i i think about it a lot when i am not playing it

which for me is sort of the hallmark of a of a good game uh and also it's just kind of fun to be playing vr stuff again uh it's got it's got me dipping my my toe back into that pool um so yeah demio d-e-m-e-o uh i i think it's sick i i genuinely think that the core sort of rpg-ness of it will make it like fun enough to play when it is just a pc game that you don't have to strap a thing to your head to to do but man it's super cool to to sort of get in there nice uh well there's some games there. Why don't you play those then? Stop complaining at us. Are people complaining at us? People are like, there's nothing to play.

What do I do, Justin? People did complain about one thing. Griffin, people really want you to try Monster Hunter Stories 2. People really, really defending it, really worried. I mean, I'll check it out, sure. I played a couple hours of Monster Hunter Stories 1, and it's rare for me to be so turned off by a game. But hey, you know what?

I'll give it a shot. Let's keep on trucking all right all right into segment b which i'm looking at the rundown here and this makes no sense to me oh did so i i actually have to run uh oh god no yeah but i i invited someone over to to cover for me so I can go get some breakfast. Do you mind if I let him in? Sure. Okay, one second. Why is he knocking?

Hey, it's a New Jersey giraffe. Oh, hey, New Jersey giraffe. Hey, New Jersey giraffe. Hey. Yeah? Yeah? Are you, so do you what's let him let him introduce let like let's let him do his fucking bit and then we'll cross-examine him yeah my name is new jersey giraffe i'm the only talking giraffe that you'll ever meet. Yeah. Objection! Yeah. Okay. All right. Man, I don't know.

All right. No, it is. Okay. Yeah. So we know another talking giraffe. His name is New York Giraffe. And honestly, talking about the existence of New York Giraffe

is not necessarily something I'm interested in doing with you New Jersey Giraffes. So I want to grant you the conceit that you are the world's only talking giraffe and move sort of through. I can't go around or above or under, so I'm just going to go through with this. I think you are confused.

Like, people who think that the New York Giants and the New York Jets are New York teams, those stadiums are in New Jersey. Okay, so hold on. Wait, are you saying that you are New York Giraffe, stadiums are in New Jersey. Okay, so hold on. Wait, are you saying that you are New York giraffe, but you have sort of accepted your bridge and tunnel-y nature? No, no, no.

I'm saying I've never left Newark. It's the only place I've actually was born in Newark Airport. Oh, shit. This whole time he's been saying Newark giraffe. Newark giraffe. Newark Airport. Oh, shit. This whole time he's been saying Newark Giraffe. Newark Giraffe. Newark Giraffe. Okay. Well, what's your deal then, man?

So I heard about your show from, you know, a stranger at the airport who was listening to the podcast, and I heard about the video games, and I thought, I got to teach you about my video game because i think uh i think it could really help uh both of us mutually russ is gonna be so pissed off so the game the game is called uh hey where where are my car keys yeah because i need to find my car keys there's only one car that is shaped uh for giraffes and i cannot get out of the airport until i find my car keys what uh what kind of what what's the

make and model of that uh it is uh a subaru it's out back okay and um'm sorry, I'm really in the weeds with Newark Giraffe. Yeah, I think I like it. I'm into it. Yeah, I think I'm into it. I guess he's just, I'm having trouble sort of knowing what's different about him from the other talking giraffe that's on this show. The difference, you know, if I were to say a New York giraffe, I would probably like pizza and bagels, but as a New Jersey giraffe, I'd like an Italian shaved ice, hoagies and pork rolls. Damn, yeah. And there's

a lot of sort of like bridge and tunnel sort of just sort of elitism that is sneaking into this character in a way that is maybe going to be just very narrow casting for our friends who live

in the sort of New England area. But that's great because there's a lot of people who live in that area. I'm a blue collar hero. Yeah, absolutely you are for sure. Hey, how do you feel about Bruce Springsteen? Oh, the boss!

That's not an answer. Love him! Bon Jovi, baby! Yeah. Hey, say ten other New Jersey things right now. Uh, uh, uh, bridge and tunnel! I already said that, that doesn't count. I already said that one, you're copying.

Uh, oh, oh, uh, mutts! Oh, I want sauce. Okay, here's how I want my hoagie. Put sausage, peppers, and some fresh mutts. Do you feel like... Can I talk to you? Yeah, but you're talking like a shooby right now. Okay, you're now reading off Wikipedia. I just want to know if you feel like you've achieved everything that you set out to do. Oh, I found my car keys.

I guess I can get out of Newark and finally visit New York. I hope I do not meet another giraffe there. This is Chris. You know what's fucked up? I used to think that Russ was New York giraffe, but then New York giraffe presented a certain like evidence that

made it like made that conclusion impossible i feel pretty strongly that chris is new jersey giraffe hey uh i my friend just chris yeah i'm just so happy to have you back oh we're happier than you could ever know now it sounds like the last segment went great, and I think everybody who listens to the show loved it and is going to be very nice to us on Twitter. It says here in the rundown that we're supposed to do reader mail, but I'm pretty sure that we don't have any listeners anymore. Yeah.

So that would be futile. They're not hearing it. Let me ask you guys if you're playing anything else besides the incredible bevy of games. I have two if i could just say them real quick check out backbone oh the controller no the uh adventure game the where oh the animals yes yes uh very moody, very gritty. A lot of, it's a very specific tone.

I'm not sure why everybody's animals in it, but it is a very interesting piece. I'm only a couple hours in. There's like, here's what my caution to you would be. There's a very specific tone. It's very well realized. It looks incredible. I mean, if you look at the screenshot, it looks so cool.

There's a lot of reading. It's a lot of like, you know what it kind of reminds me of in that sense of like Disco Elysium, where it's like you just have to dial in that you're going to be reading a lot of conversations and they're well written but there's like a lot and you just have to lean into that um with like sometimes going quite a while before the sort of more traditional gameplay mechanics come through but it looks cool it's a very specific tone um i'm also kind of interested because there's like some sort of big conflict of like people it's gotten some really bad reviews uh from from from players who I think it gets too weird for some people. So I'm kind of interested to see what on earth that could be. The other one that I wanted to mention very quickly was Boomerang X.

Oh, yeah. That's cool. Here's what I will say. I played it on the Switch. switch well let me say what the game is first it is sort of an arena battling game uh with some platforming elements where you have a uh first person you have this like spinning it they call it a boomerang but it really looks it's the glaive from crawl yeah which is a reference that like only us 80s kids will uh appreciate but it is like a spinning glaive uh that you throw at enemies and then you

can teleport to so if you can imagine that you throw the boomerang and it is flying out and killing enemies and then you can press another button and basically like hurl yourself at wherever it is um and in practice it that's a little tricky right at the very beginning but in practice it feels like incredible because you're basically just like flying around the area following your your boomerang uh and soaring through the air and hitting enemies with it. It's very cool. I will say that I got it on the Switch and almost instantly regretted it

because it's just for dual stick stuff, like the Switch always feels bad. It just doesn't feel good for me, for like first person shooters, the sticks just feel, do you guys get that in my the the monster hunter controller have you done that sorry what you can get um this is like a recommendation there there are joy-con replacements that are like larger well i have a light for monster hunter this is on the light i mean i only, yeah. Maybe that is part of my problem.

But it's really neat. I would recommend playing it on a different platform. Or if you have, you know, a Switch Big, as they call it. Yeah. I'm going to fit in a reader mail here. Because Trevor on Twitter.com recommended SNKRX, a recommended uh snkrx which is a in his words three dollar roguelike snake game with auto battler mechanics and that is actually a pretty perfect description of what it is uh like snake you're in confined in a little uh rectangle and and you get heroes who are represented by dots.

Very minimalistic art style. Yeah, you can get up to six or seven, and each of those dots has their own abilities. So some fires weapons, some have area attack spells. And yeah, it's not super challenging um runs go pretty long but i imagine you only would play it a few times to complete the whole thing but for three bucks it is it's a good way to spend an evening um i really enjoyed it it looks cool it looks like right up my alley uh i can't i think we've all been playing the same game that we got quite early

and cannot talk about. Correct. But that's... I can't... I can't wait to talk about that one because it's good as hell. I mean, y'all don't want to hear me talk about... Great, very good addition.

Yeah, thank you. I mean, y'all don't want to hear me talk about Final Fantasy anymore. Y'all say... Every time hear me talk about final fantasy anymore y'all say every time i talk about 14 i mean i did start fucking around with the gold saucer though they got the gold saucer in it like from seven you know what's your hour count up to on that one griff it's actually impossible to say because i leave it logged in just on my pc so that like when i get a few spare minutes here and there i just steam link it up i don't have to do all the bullshit login stuff again. Is this the time for me to start playing Griff? Should I get in now?

Is this the moment? I mean, Hey, serious, serious question. Yeah. Your compulsions aside and your specific, your life circumstances aside.

Is it like, is it, is it something that is worth getting into? Like should people, should I play it? I mean, are we going to do this? Are we doing this?

Are we doing this convo? Because I think the... I believe the answer is yes. I think it's a phenomenal game. And I think it's easy to meme-ify people's enjoyment of it. There is... If you're not plugged into it,

there is a very... And there always has been a sort of very tribalist way that people who play mmos think and talk about the mmos that they play and and therefore by extension fucking hate all other mmos and and for a while now that has been like final fantasy 14 versus wow for for the most part um and as as a result of that people who play final fantasy 14 are like deep into it because there is a a sort of defense force mentality about it uh there's a big wow streamer named asmongold um who if you've ever like looked at YouTube and Googled WoW or Final Fantasy XIV, you've seen his like mouth agape sort of reaction videos just sort of scattered across the results there. Uh, and he has just like recently crossed party lines to start playing Final Fantasy XIV and it's sort of fired up. All of that, All of that stuff,

all of that tribalism all over again. And I see how that is exhausting and kind of sullies the waters of conversation about really either game, but Final Fantasy XIV is sort of the one that everybody's talking about right now. You put all that aside, I think this game absolutely rules and has dethroned like any other MMO I've played. I am enjoying it in ways that I have not enjoyed other games before. And it does carry that caveat that I think all of us on this call hate, which is that like,

you gotta put in the work to get to this stuff that is like really, really great about it. But I feel invested in the story and in my character to a degree that like maybe no other game has has hooked me like story wise and character investment wise before and i do not think that i am the only one that sort of harbors that opinion about the game. Here's the deal. I'm sure there's going to be a slow period at some point in August or in the next few weeks. How about for one of those weeks, you give us a tour?

We all play some Final Fantasy XIV together, and you give us your expert-level tour of the world. How much do we need to play to get to a point where it's like enjoying ourselves i i mean i it's it is tough for me to answer that question for you it it uh it starts quite slow both narratively and mechanically they uh i think like last year at some point shortened the like first campaign the realm reborn campaign because it was chock full of cruft uh and from what i've heard it is still uh you know it still takes some time to get through but it is more meat than you know excess at at this point um it has ups and downs is the is is the real problem uh the the main sort of storylines of each campaign are good to excellent,

but there is always periods between like campaign releases, right? Between like DLC releases. And in those interstitial periods, the quality of the content can occasionally take a dive. For example, like A Realm Reborn good, and you can play it just like any other sort of Final Fantasy game, and it's cool, and you learn the game, you explore

this world, and it's, like, enough to carry you through. And then there is a chunk of game that comes after that that bridges the gap before the first DLC that is rough, that is, like, a lot of padding and is not particularly pleasant to play through. And there's ways around that. I actually played through some of that and was having a really tough time making it through it. But there's a potion you can buy with money that lets you jump to the expansion. And then you can watch like a YouTube video

that's like, yeah, here's what happens in all of that extra stuff, which is, you know, it's not for for everyone i think that route of getting through it but it is sort of i don't know it's how it's how i have bridged the gaps but it hits it it hits a point that it it takes off and doesn't stop being sort of phenomenal um i don't know man i think i i i genuinely it is weird to me to occupy this space on this podcast where like there's this thing that I love and think about a lot that I fully recognize is not, I think, the three of y'all's jams. But I also think that like if you have enjoyed a Final Fantasy game before, I think, I mean, if you're willing to put in the kind of work that a Final Fantasy game sort of demands, I think that this is a fine time to get into XIV. I think that's great.

And I think you are literally hours of content away from hitting the near threshold. So I don't think you need to apologize for literally anything. Before we wrap, I want to try something new also meeting feverish listener demand. We're not always great about reiterating the names of the games that we played this week.

So I thought, hey, let's just go from the top. This week we spoke about Overboard. That is the story you're a woman who murders her husband game. We spoke about Chicory, which is the Zelda-like game about art. We spoke about chicory which is the zelda-like game about art we

spoke about phantom abyss the first person uh uh puzzly mirror's edge meets spelunky game we spoke about demio which griffin compared to hero quest and that is literally i was deciding that i need to go play it immediately hey let's play that hey let's play that too hey that would be a fun fucking game to play together we should we should get a i have some time yeah let's demio it up let's do it is it on where is it oculus store uh yeah it's not it's it's quest native now so you can just play it on the headset you don't have to link or anything great you nice griffin had another game he couldn't talk about but he did talk about final fantasy 14 which i think y'all all know what that is at this point justin you spoke about boomerang x uh, which is the throw the deadly boomerang,

which you can teleport to. What was the other game you spoke about? God, it was just... Oh, Backbone. Backbone. Backbone. Backbone. And I spoke about SNKRX,

which is the world's most advanced snake game. And next week, we will be talking about the legend of Zelda, Skyward Sword. We're talking about the bad one. No, Skyward Sword. I'm actually looking forward to it. I need to.

Twilight Princess is the bad one. Reviews hit. Twilight Princess is good too. Reviews are hitting this morning and a lot of people are liking it because it's a good ass game that they took the fucking motion controls out of. Yeah.

I'm excited to relitigate this game yeah yeah uh cool hey justin where do we go from here well we tell people to follow us at the besties pod uh we tell people to like subscribe to the show and rate and review and all that good stuff that people always ask you to do but it really does help us continue to make this program so thank you for that and thanks for being here with us we really appreciate you that's going to do it for us for this week so until next time be sure to join us again again for the besties because should the

world's best friends pick the world's best games. Besties!