The Besties - The Best Summer Games You're Not Playing

Episode Date: July 31, 2020

The Besties recommend some of their favorite games that have come out this summer, including Carrion, The Under Presents, Zach Gage’s Good Sudoku, the updated Noita, and more! Plus, they discuss what upcoming releases they are excited for in the rest of 2020. 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!

So I don't know if y'all heard, but Russ Freshdick got a little present the other morning. Oh boy. To a real surprise. I thought he explicitly said he didn't want to talk about it. I want him to talk about it. I want to talk about it. He shared a photo of it with me, and now we're going to talk about it on the podcast. Oh, I see.

Okay. But it's not, this isn't for the podcast. This is like stuff that happened to be recorded, and it's not, this isn't for the podcast. This is like stuff like just that happened to be recorded and it's never used. It just, Jelani happens to find like a little clip of us chatting before the show every single week. This isn't the show, Russ. So talk about your gross bug bite. Oh, cool. Okay.

So I'm not great with bugs, but I do really like hiking and uh my wife and i went camping over the weekend and a moment uh one was that we woke up one morning and there was a spider the size of a half dollar by our heads not ideal but that's fine but but the rest of the trip went great and it was really lovely and then yesterday i woke up and i was uh you know, stretching. It's been two days since we went hiking or whatever. And I felt on my back, the small of my back. And I was like, oh, weird. Is there like a skin tag there or something? And I'm like, I'm like, well, should I just pull it?

And then I looked in the mirror and there was a fellow there just hanging on. A little, little tick friend. And I had a fucking meltdown. But you got it out? You dealt with it? Well, I didn't deal with it. My wife dealt with it after I had a little child's tantrum, because I had never experienced anything like that.

What was her reaction? Well, there are moments, you know, we all, you balance your partner out, right? So there are moments when I'm having a meltdown and she comforts me and vice versa. This was certainly the former of those situations. And she was very brave and, you know, got some tweezers and pulled it out properly. I've never had like a bug living in me that I know of, that I know of. It's possible. Think about that, though. that I know of it's possible to happen think about that though think about how that bug's

life has been changed ever since the day he bit a radioactive fresh fresh dick he has become fresh tick fresh tick fresh tick all his friends think that he's a dick can't see colors loves eating egg sandwiches

does bad bad voices. This is a disaster. Look out. Here comes the fresh tick. Good summary of me as a human. That's basically a summary of the rest of the human being. Let me do a nice version and Jelani can cross. Do you have a kind?

A sweet, sweet version? Always supports my woodworking efforts is a good conversationalist look out here comes the fresh tick he's a great listener not so hot of a talker do a podcast with him and it's a mixed bag. Fresh dick. Fresh dick. Oh, shit. Look out. The man already got a bug living inside him. And then he just dragged him through the mud.

What's amazing is that Russ's camera is always so dark that we can't make out the details of his face. But he just took off his glasses and wiped his eyes. I can't tell if those were laughter tears or the other kind probably one out of each eye right a laughter tear out from one side of another My name is Justin McElroy, and I know the best games of the week. My name is Griffin McElroy, and I know the best games of the week. My name is Christopher Plant, and I know the best games of the week. My name is Russ Froschek, and I know the best games of the week. Oh my gosh. Welcome to the besties.

You've made it here again to discuss the latest and greatest in home interactive entertainment it's a game of the year show that goes all year long uh and usually we discuss one hot title that uh everyone is chatting about but this week we're doing something a little different. We are looking at a bevy of a beautiful bounty of, let me try again, a lot of luscious ludos. Oh, that's cool. A gaggle of great games. There it is, that have come out recently. And we're just going to hop into it because there's so much to talk about.

And I do want to mention these are games that like are not like AAA, recently and uh we're just gonna hop into it because there's so much to talk about and i do want to mention these are games that like are not like triple and not that there are triple a titles coming out right now but these are generally speaking smaller titles hey man there's there's fucking destroy all humans remaster remaster remade yeah you know what real quick can we just talk about before we get into the the game the the bulk of these games, very quick hits. Things you tried and maybe you didn't get to spend a lot of time with. I wanted to mention very quickly a cool VR game that I played called In Death Unchained. Whoa.

Yeah, I know. It's not a good title but it's an archery sort of like roguelike where you're seeing how far you can make it into a castle dungeon type thing and it's good it's archery so like vr is already pretty good at it um but there's a lot of cool they've they've used it in a lot of cool ways one is the way you get around is teleport arrows cool so you pull and you shoot and you teleport to wherever you just hit with an arrow, which actually gives you, one, a lot of control, two, constant practice of using the bow and arrow,

like more than you would just shooting enemies, which is very cool. They have a shield that you can pop up instantly, sort of like... Space Pirate Trainer? Space Pirate Trainer, right. A shield that you can pop up instantly. So you're like firing arrows. You see one coming at you, you instantly can pop up a shield, which is very good.

The other hand, the same button as the shield is a dodge. And the way they do this is very cool. You have what are called teleport shards and you push the button and throw a teleport shard and you teleport over just a couple feet. So like the flow of it is great because

it like to dodge you flick your wrist oh yeah and you're like you're now you're over here and you're shooting again um and uh all that stuff is very it's very cool uh anything else really quick yeah so soda dungeon 2 we mentioned it uh but i don't think we just thought it would be a good like at length conversation topic but it's a good soda dungeon game it's kind of clicker like in dna but without the clicking it's just sort of like a very very very uh minimalistic rpg where you uh send little heroes into a dungeon to earn money to upgrade this bar where you can unlock sodas that attract new heroes and get uh upgrades for your town to get new armor to get your heroes deeper and deeper into these dungeons. Soda Dungeon 2 incorporates like a prestige mechanic, essentially, where after finishing the first 100 floors of the dungeon,

you jump to an alternate timeline where you start over completely. And then you go into a dungeon with 200 floors, and then you do it again to a dungeon with 300 floors. I think I got to like the seventh dimension of that. And there's like there's a lot there's like it's a game with like a ton of upgrades and progression hooks but i feel like you hit a wall like pretty quickly it's not like i don't know i mean not that quick you hit the seventh dimension yeah that's fair i mean i get i i did play it for a while like i i for sure got my money's worth and i i enjoy those games but it's also free so you definitely got my money's worth. And I enjoy those games, but... It's also free. So you definitely got your money's worth. Well, I mean, I bought the like $2.99 no ads upgrade.

There's also an upgrade for like two bucks that doubles the speed of combat. Oh, wow. You buy that. It's hard to feel good about buying that, but also like I'm a busy man. So I think it's a good game. And I enjoy my time with it,

but it is not the iOS game I've spent the most time playing. A sneak preview. Very quick, two more. CrossCode is out on Switch. That is a very interesting RPG that's sort of styled like an MMO. I just want to say, Russ can echo this. I've been playing it on the Switch,

which is a great platform for it, except for the fact, don't buy it right now. It runs, it is embarrassing. It's not great. The lag on menus is like, I mean, literally three seconds to get from one menu option to another. It is absolutely unforgivable. Wait until it's patched.

The devs have said that there was a patch coming. I don't know if the patch is actually going to fix it. I think it's going through. I think it's like going through cert. But we don't know for sure if it's going to fix it so just keep an eye on and we'll talk about it if it fixes it and uh last one creek is did you any of you guys is that the amary amaryta what is the marina the people yeah it looked like odd world or like flashback like no i mean it's one of those like uh pretty machinary did they do

machinary yeah machinary yeah it's machinary it looks great it's like a little bit kind of like um i don't know gothic if you want to say that um but it's a puzzle platformer um kind of reminds me of like what did you say you guys had a good ones like odd world is a good is a good or flashback or that things like that. You're basically an unarmed dude trying to make his way through a haunted house by using traps and levers and switches and stuff to get around ghosts in a puzzly type way, not so much an arcade-y type way. But it's cool.

If that's your bag, it's very cool. Very, very quick one from me. Panzer Paladin, which is like mega man crossed with uh master blaster uh and it rules it is by tribute games who have made a bunch of things they've been like pseudo hits um mercenary king splint hook wiz orb oh yeah uh yeah and and this is it is you are a giant mech who goes into these different worlds to fight uh famous uh deities or mythological gods throughout time uh and you will find these swords that have special powers or you can choose to break them down um and then get special power ups so there's like all these little risk-reward systems throughout the game.

And it is, it's just one of those games that keeps layering on ideas, but they're all good ideas, which makes it kind of boring to talk about because it's a whole bunch of mechanics, but very, very, very, very, very fun to play. I'm gonna check that out. What's it out on?

It is out on Switch and PC, I believe. I need to check to make sure. Let me start by talking about my game, my official pick, although we spent like 10 minutes talking about other stuff, so I feel like we've already started throwing spaghetti at the wall because it'll be quick. I want to talk about

Good Sudoku by Zach Gage. So much better than the previous one. Way better than Bad Sudoku. Why did they start with Bad Sudoku? I don't know. I don't know. I realized that like I kind of dig this game the same way that I did Clubhouse Games in that it is like kind of a game about gaming literacy, specifically Sudoku, which I think

is like a subject that I did not know I was interested in, but it is a game that is, that reveals to you like what Sudoku is actually about above the like, or rather below the surface level, which is all that I thought existed, right? Sudoku is a puzzle where you have not a nine by nine grid separated into, you know, these three by three chunks.

And there are numbers and you can't have a repeated number in any row any column or any house which is what they call the three by three squares um that's sudoku i feel like everybody knows what sudoku is right you see it in the paper you see it in magazines whatever um and when i solve a sudoku in like a a magazine or a newspaper or whatever it's literally a question of going through the different cells which is what they call the individual squares in in in this grid and you know look at a cell and say like okay well this row doesn't have a nine this column doesn't have a nine and this house doesn't have a nine it's the only place where that can go so this is a nine and then that informs the other cells in that house that row that that column and then you just kind of go through it right but the thing you are doing is just process of elimination you're just going

through and solving it based on that level of deduction alone uh and what i've realized through good sudoku is that like that is baby town yeah little little kid level sudokus and like all the ones that i've ever done in magazines and newspapers have been accessible like that there's a lot more going on there are a lot of uh advanced strategies for solving sudoku where the numbers aren't immediately evident like that where it's not well this cell can only have this one number in it so that is obviously solution uh there are puzzles where you have way way way less to go on and now it's a question of like uh every cell in this puzzle has three

possible solutions uh i guess i just have to start guessing and then see if everything lines up but uh good sudoku is all about not doing that. And in fact, it makes the claim that like you can solve any Sudoku puzzle without having to guess and see if everything lines up. There are there is like a tutorial that is very accessible. It teaches you the basics. It teaches you how to use the notes, the note taking tools that I'll talk about here in just one second, which is like the best thing about Good Sudoku.

And then it shows you these like 20 different like advanced tactics like for instance if there's a row and there's two cells in that row that uh you know the number three can only be in one of those two cells then you know it's not in any of the other cells it's got to be in one of those two right if those two cells are in the same house you know that the number two is not anywhere else in that house. And that's like a beginner level advanced strategy. And it goes so, so, so, so much deeper than that. And figuring out those things has made Sudoku like a completely different thing for me and has made it very, very fun for me. One last thing. The best thing it does is how it handles notes, which is to say there's an auto note button that you tap it right when you start and it shows you it fills in all the cells with all the possible

numbers that could go in those cells which like i told my wife rachel about that and she's like doesn't that just solve the puzzle for you but it very rarely just like shows you like okay well this one's got to be three this one's got to be nine it just opens the door for you to use these advanced tactics without having to do the like busy work of just like going through and figuring out like what can't be what and that is like the whole reason they built the game is that gage wanted to get into sudoku but like found that part of the process like so fucking annoying and uh menial and now this does it for you so that you can focus on like the really really satisfying deduction work of of sudoku i think it's brilliant i think it's incredible so i and i think that's where it succeeds there's a lot of areas that it succeeds in ways that like if

you've ever tried to play sudoku on a phone for example it's generally a nightmare like the ui is a nightmare it's like very cramped and you're trying to like force it but the idea that you're removing the dummy parts the parts that you would just automatically get to if you just like counted yes basically it removes all of those elements so all you're left with is the puzzle solving logic elements that have no like robotic oh you'll eventually get to this point. It's more the thoughtful parts of Sudoku, which means that because you're getting rid of that first stage, you can get through puzzles much faster

and eventually get to puzzles that are much harder and more complicated because they're removing that, oh, I'm spending brainpower to figure out which one doesn't have a nine in it. It's not even brainpower, right? Like, that's just literally looking at a row and saying, like, well, this one doesn't have a three. That's's not even brain power right like that's that's just literally looking at a row and saying like well this one doesn't have a three that's it that's not really puzzle solving but that is also the only kind of sudoku i've ever done before is that very very surface level this game has a button that fucking does it for you so that you can get on to like the really really difficult puzzles that it teaches you these strategies that feels

so i spent like 25 minutes doing a pro level puzzle the other day, just like staring at it. And then like, you find that one thing you find, that's what's so great about Sudoku is like, I found this one like cell and I was like, oh, well this can't be a seven. And you scratch out the seven and then just everything just kind of falls into place. It's really cool. It is very, very satisfying. And it has taught me about Sudoku, which is like not something I thought I wanted to learn about. Some real quick backstory, just because I think it's especially useful with Zach Gage. So Zach was an artist before he was a game designer. And he made some really bizarre stuff like a game called Lose Lose, which was like picture like Space Invaders,

except for when you shoot one of the alien creatures, that creature is associated with a random file on your computer, deleting it permanently. Oh, yeah. Until the game destroyed your entire computer. It was great. And what's so interesting to me about his career is he is an artist. He sees the world very visually. And it feels like especially this back half of his career so far

has been about looking at iOS seeing that there are these core games like Chess and Solitaire and Pool and Sudoku that there's thousands of versions of them on the App Store but they're all bad or mediocre and his

MO is like well what if I just did that but good and beautiful or that but slightly more interesting in the case of, like, Pocket Run Pool? And that is, it's so fascinating to me, one, because it lacks pretension that this artist, you know, shifted his career to, like, making games accessible and making games for an audience that would usually not come in contact with the indie game mentality, but also that he's shifted from this original game, which is about literally destroying your computer,

to making things that are super safe and super friendly and super accommodating in genres that usually are riddled with predatory ads on free App Store games. I think it's a really, really, really cool career. Plant, would you like to carry on with another game yeah i'll carry on my wayward son uh carrion is a game that i love um it is a game in which you play as uh an amorphous ball of tentacles um inside of a secret laboratory underground uh i i would compare it to like the thing the john carpenter movie right and it's pseudo metroidvania in that over the course of the

game you become bigger and more powerful you have abilities that can like bash through uh harder materials or you can take on more powerful enemies with uh super i don't know like releasing like tin spiky tentacles all at once but what i really love most about it is just how it feels and how it feels to be the monster it doesn't feel like anything really that i played in games um because you just kind of float almost through the environment it feels you know what it reminds me of it feels like you're rolling a like a pool ball on a pool table almost yeah it's like very smooth or or like you know when mario gets in the cloud um in super mario brothers it feels like that you're just kind of just kind of moving around gracefully um and it's a it's an extremely violent game i mean you like rip people open and their guts spill

everywhere but it's it's so from the point of view of this creature that it it i don't know if it's funny bordering on indifferent um to all this violence it doesn't stress on the violence like the last of us it's more like uh i think i wrote about this somewhere that like you're like a snake uh in a classroom when the snake gets fed the the mice like it's like okay this is just what i'm gonna do now i i have no soul or morals and these mice know what the game is and i'm gonna eat them um and it's just a game where you just go from room to room casually eating everything so that you can grow and ultimately fulfill your dreams which i won't spoil because that's a good turn in the game um it is it's just a really

beautiful little game the one caution that i'll give people is navigating the world can be a little confusing at first um and and i would encourage you if you're playing it and you get a little annoyed in the first hour muscle through maybe look for a guide if you have to um i i definitely ran into that problem but once it starts going it almost feels like they wanted to build a more like open world metroidvania and then about one or two levels in they're like no that's terrible we're just gonna make pretty straightforward levels and let you just go ham on scientists for fun. Yeah, I struggled with that, especially when I would set the game down for a little while

and then pick it back up, and I would start looking like, okay, wait, where am I? Which way am I going? What am I supposed to do? Which is ameliorated somewhat because I just think getting around the world is so fun and it just looks great. It just looks like you're,

you know what it feels like? It feels like navigation in this game feels like you have a cheat on. You know what I mean? It feels like you have some sort of like hack or something. It's like, it shouldn't be this fast. It feels like the game was built

for like slower creatures, right? you almost feel like you're cheating by how fast you're like getting around the world and blowing through um i also struggled a little bit with targeting i i uh on the with the thumbsticks uh targeting the different uh uh like when i did have an enemy that i encountered or whatever, I had trouble hitting them sometimes, especially when you start getting like shielded enemies that you have to hit from a certain direction, et cetera. Yeah, what I particularly liked about it, I feel like these games struggle sometimes

where they get to this point where it's like, well, we need to make you feel kind of underpowered in a situation. And you certainly run into enemies that have flamethrowers and like mech suits and all sorts of like really heavy duty stuff. And even in those scenarios, I still felt like kind of a badass, which is like pretty tough to do from a game design scaling perspective. But it didn't feel like I was, you know, it was auto winning or anything like that.

It just it constantly made me feel powerful in interesting ways yeah it goes from fighting ants to fighting a squirrel like i don't i wouldn't want to fight a squirrel but i i'm a pretty good confidence that i could like beat the shit out of a squirrel if it like went after me right yeah i hope i never have to i love you know chip and dale um that but I believe they're chipmunks. Oh, sorry. Thank you. I appreciate that correction.

The other thing that I liked about this game is you are already so overpowered, but if you get into the role-playing spirit of like, I am this thing, and I'm going to menace the creatures that I am hunting, you can do things like you'll be in a floor above a room room full of scientists and you'll break a little air vent open and you'll shoot your arm tentacle down to grab one of them and then you you can pull your body back so they can't see you it's just your tentacle holding this human now weapon and you will slam it all across the room just demolishing everything in sight until it's just a mix of electricity and blood um and it is the only time i played a game where i was like oh wow this is really what it would feel like to be the monster in a monster movie there's another cool effect little small

thing like that where when you're rooming around the levels if you pass by a light you automatically smash the light oh i didn't notice that and it feels yeah it's very it's a very cool thing it looks like a horror movie like you you see him like ripping stuff down and i caught myself and it with regards to role playing uh more than once like going into a room where there's just a switch i get to flip to like turn off some security system and there's like a single scientist in there and i'll just like walk right up to it and flip the switch and just kind of like you are you're fine you get for whatever reason for whatever reason i've decided you're cool and it's i'll be honest it's because i have full health right now and i don't need your flesh to join my biomass but remember and tell them tell your children there are so many people

characters in this game on toilets like clearly that scene in jurassic park where the t-rex eats the dude on the port-a-potty was very informative for whoever made this game because it's amazing how many times i was just wrecking people in one room and in the room next door somebody just meanwhile is just taking like the poop of their life totally unaware and then the poop of their death listen I love video games and I would continue to discuss this one but there are

other ones to discuss and we must move on we must move on come with us hop on our shoulders we'll carry you on carry on oh my gosh okay I want to talk about my video game no one else Hop on our shoulders. We'll carry you on. Carry on. Oh my gosh. Okay, I want to talk about my video game.

No one else has played it, so you're going to have to trust me. I begged them to play it. Did you notice how we all played Carrion? No one played that game. Well, if Carrion was something you had to buy tickets for and then you could play it at 9 o'clock p.m. Wow, Griffin, that sounds like a revolutionary, interesting experience.

Let me talk about it. The Under Presents is a VR experience. I know that it is native to Quest for sure. I didn't need a link cable or anything for it. It's probably on other platforms. I think it's on Steam. It's by a developer called Tender Claws, and it is basically a theatrical production.

If we start there, a lot of the things that I'll say will make sense. It's a theatrical production. Basically, your interactions with the world are limited to taking on and off a mask, picking up items. Sometimes you can do a little spell that will grow or shrink items or absorb them into you or let you interact with them. But basically, that is it. That's the extent of your

interaction with the world. And The Under Presents is a theatrical... The game itself presents theatrical shows. There are tickets, timed tickets that you buy where you pay $15 and you get a ticket that is before a specific time if you miss it you lose your ticket just like any other theatrical production you show up five

minutes before you're teleported into the lobby with i was with three other people it seems like it's designed for four people at a time which is wild to think about four people can play this at a time i don't know if it's instance, but there is a limiting factor, and that's the fact that you do the show with a live actor who is performing their role, and they're the only one you hear talking. Everybody else is anonymous, but they perform their role live with you, interacting with you. The show that is going right now, it'll run until I believe August or September. I think September is called Tempest. And it's sort of an adaptation of the

Tempest where the different people in the show are given like little roles to play throughout. There's some very simple interactions that you do to sort of act those out. Like for instance, in the first scene, I was assigned to be one of the sailors that's coming onto the island and i was told to like pick up this steering wheel and pretend to steer it are you told that by the actor like in character yes the actor in character gives people roles but he's not the actor is not like in character of the tempest it is very much like let's pretend the tempest together I am a storm. Exactly right. It's not that far off,

but what's cool about it is it's elevated because you're being teleported to different environments that feel like appropriate to the moment. And there's some special effects. They play different characters throughout. It evolves. The thing gets increasingly more intense, I would say. But it is one of the best sort of like multiplayer experiences.

The only other interaction you have with the world is you can press a button to snap. And if he asks you to do a role, for example, or asks you to do something, you can nod to show that you understand, or you snap, and people use that to, if something really cool happens, all four of us would independently just sort of start snapping. Like a beatnik fart.

Yeah, exactly, right? As a form of, like, applause. And people really bought in, because you paid 15 bucks for this hour-long experience like you're gonna lean into it um at the end of our show the we were transported back to the lobby me and the three other people and like everyone took time saying goodbye like they there was like bowing and some like snapping and and you know waving or whatever what limited ways you could before you walk out of the theater and are teleported away from this it's really really

cool i would say that it's more at this point about absolutely 100 worth doing i am more excited about like ways they can evolve this with different shows or whatever if this is popular enough and i believe this is this is their second or third show right i you know i've done other things i think i would say that it's sort of limiting right now in the term in the fact that like the shows i think are at seven eight and nine p.m est so if, and then there's like some earlier shows on weekends. There's like matinees on the weekends. So that is kind of a limiting factor

if you don't play games at night. You know, it's harder to get into. But I just found it a really exceptional, very cool and weird experience that I would be very happy to do again as soon as they have a different show or to do the show again and have a different role because they they ask you like have you played this part before and you know they try to give new opportunities to to different people what excites me about this the most and i again i didn't have a chance to play it but what excites me is the idea of the eventual democratization of this

vr theater idea like i am thinking about the power of a like sleep is death style system that isn't just like come here and pay a ticket to go to a show it is like you you know uh gary's mod style like set the stage and set the objects in it and then you run this like you get to host come into these servers where you host your own shows like tabletop simulator but for kind of like tabletop simulator but in vr but and for theater like i i if that was going on right now like if those tools were available that game whatever you want to call it like was available right now to like theater companies that have no source of income or whatever like that seems like incredibly cool and also in some ways like inevitable and it's neat that this is like it's it seems like the first step towards that maybe not the first step i'm sure there's

like been been interactive stuff like this uh especially in vr social games and stuff but it is really cool to see a game like really just double down focused on on vr theater um yeah man i'm as sleep as death what a cool ass game that was uh okay you gotta tell us about this game because i i love this game yeah this is a very cool game so i i'm trying to i was trying to remember whether we had actually talked about it. So the game originally came out the game I'm talking about is called no EDA. And no I ta. And I believe it came out about a year ago on Steam as an early access title. And obviously, there's been a lot of instances where games come out as early access, but they're effectively done. And it's just like, well, we're just going to polish.

But they've actually used, the developers have actually used the last year for like an earnest early access effort insofar as like every few months, there's been a new batch of spells and enemies and areas and just like a ton of upgrades to the system to the point where they're very, actually very close to having a 1.0 release i'm not sure they have a date for it but it's very close suffice to say um it is a 2d

side-scrolling wizard game effectively um you are a dude in a robe or a lady in a robe and you go into this cave with a very basic um set of skills and a bomb and the game utilizes like a very complex series of like fluid dynamics fire spreading mechanics all these elements that basically uh coincide with one another to the point where um you know obviously fire sets uh oil on fire and does more damage for enemies that are covered in oil. Water will douse fire. The water dousing fire creates steam, which in turn might interact with electricity, for example. So there's this very complicated series of mechanics at work here.

And making it even more complicated and kind of interesting is that whenever you beat a level, you get this opportunity to basically craft your own spells using the spells that are in your inventory so maybe you have a spell that fires a simple like magic bolt and you can combine that with another spell that maybe has lightning attack so suddenly your basic magic bolt now does lightning damage as an example but you the the level of combinations are just get so wild and complex to the point where it's actually very easy to break the game you can basically develop this combination of spells that like make you just cruise through levels much faster than you normally would but that's kind of okay it makes every run i mean it's a roguelike it makes every run feel very different uh it reminds me a lot of binding of isaac in that way where you can have this

overwhelmingly powerful combination of things um and it ends up just kind of cruising you through levels uh i'm very curious to see what they do for the 1.0 but if you're into like spelunky or binding of isaac stuff like that those are the sort of games that like this definitely pulls. Also, if you like secrets, this is a game for you because this game is loaded, similar to Spelunky with, with stuff.

I mean, the biggest clue I can give anybody is down is not the only direction you can go. Whoa. Yeah, I know. You're telling me this game's got left it's got i uh i really struggled to get into this one i i tried um i think that the bones are there

um i just found it like trying to understand mechanically pretty tough right now. There's a lot of stuff I just didn't understand while I was playing. I am positive that I could bang my head against it and get to some semblance of understanding. I just didn't with all these different games. I wanted to try to play everybody else's game, so I would be a good conversationalist about them. And with all these games to play, I didn't really have time.

But I feel like maybe it's something they could fix in later updates just to make the base i never saw like the spell creation or anything like that i just ran around with a canteen and dumped it in poison which was good i i think it's one of those games where i think it's similar to spelunky in that way where like the first level is so punishing and takes you like a good hour or two just to like die and die and die until you feel like you're capable of the systems to beat the first level and that's where all the other mechanics start opening up is after you're out past that first level but it is very intimidating for i think people that are just jumping in that don't really know what they're doing uh you know you die 15 times within 10 minutes um it could be like a lot to deal with,

but it is worth sticking it out. Yeah, especially if that's what you like. If you like opaque games, we're like discovering what the game even is, is the reward. I think this game is for you. If you don't like that, I would agree with Justin

that you probably want to stay away. Justin, as a bizarre example, there's people found after like six months of playing the game people found out there are three like random liquids there's like 16 or 17 different liquids but there are three that if you combine in a certain way it is alchemy and all three liquids just fuse into a giant pile of gold and no one had any idea for like months and months and months so like that's that's cool there's like all sorts of like really cool secrets in the game uh so yeah that's no ito okay that's all the video games there are so don't don't those are all the video this is the last episode people i hope people are

happy we got a little bit of feedback from the past three weeks people saying do you like video games anymore and it turns out we do like video games like i don't know that that's entirely fair i i think there have been things in all the games that we've talked about recently that are like good and enjoyable i think if anything like our frustration well i don't know specifically my frustration with ghost of tsushima is that i love that developer and there are so many good ass bones there that i wanted it to be better. But us being critical of video games doesn't mean we don't like video games. No, I can just sense that if someone's jazzed

about a specific game, it can be a little hard to be like, I wouldn't say we were nitpicking, but I get it. Sometimes they just want to hear people be enthusiastic about stuff they really, really love. And we were not the most of the last three games i mean the last three episodes i should say i'll give you that i'll give you that on paper

mario that one that was a real fart balloon okay i'll give you all that are you ready for some uh from listener mail yeah yes yeah i love that um so first one uh from angry aria on twitter do you have any games you loved in the past but you're scared to ever replay because you're sure the nostalgia is better than the reality i have one that i'm actually playing right now persona 4 golden came out on pc and i started to play it on pc and i was like man i wish i could play this portable and i was like oh it's on fucking vita i've been replaying that i'm like i'm like pretty deep into it it is it is still one of my favorite games of all time but it has not aged uh from a sort of social perspective social issue perspective it has not aged especially at all at all like there is a there is some rampant sort of homophobia and

uh some some trans representation issues in that game that are like like i always thought were there but now playing it in 2020 is like oh holy shit you can't just say like oh that character's got balls it's like whoa hey p4g let's calm it down i know persona 5 has its share of issues and hasn't like even the the remake the the royal, they attempted to address some of those and it didn't necessarily thread the needle. But yeah, that's one that like, I don't know. It is very regrettable is the word I would use because I do adore those games,

but I've caught myself yikesing at it pretty hard. Yeah, yeah. In the land of yikes, I think the biggest one looking at my shelf is Urban Chaos Riot Response, which is the game that Rocksteady made before the Batman games, where you are a riot cop. And it is, you know what, the good thing is you can watch it on YouTube and just see what a truly, truly bonkers game it is. It is wild knowing also the inherent copness of Batman that the studio made that game,

and then somebody was like, you know who would be good for Batman? Those guys. I would also say a lot of Wii games, I worry that I would not enjoy them as much anymore. But maybe that's just because it's been a little while. I mean, we talked about Super Mario Galaxy a few episodes ago where like that was a game of the year winner

and it didn't necessarily feel the most. No, no. The problem is you were wrong there. It is fantastic and still holds up. No, totally, totally okay. i feel like there's a lot of wii gamecube games that i and wii u like that entire well maybe not wii u but that i would like actually kind of like to return to because i feel like i didn't i don't know i played the same seven wii games that everybody else played and missed out on a lot of other ones yeah justin how about you uh i feel like maybe uh house of the dead overkill i have such fond memories of that wonderful grindhouse shooter and i feel like if i went back and maybe wouldn't hold

up it's an 11 year old game at this point uh but i have i have wonderful memories playing it and i feel like i they would not survive uh the the transition i feel like those wonderful memories are associated with like me and you like playing through almost that entire game in a weekend and how fun it is to shoot light guns at a tv unless the like it is fun to shoot like i miss that i miss like shooting light guns at a tv um oh my god i just thought my favorite like a game that i used to pour hundreds of dollars into at the arcade was police detective trainer do you guys remember that one yes i mean that one was like you like shooting at targets and like doing matching colors and and you know uh shoot these balls as they fly through the air but like that's the bit that's that's that that ain't savory uh tony hawk ride for you

tony hawk ride of course my favorite skateboard uh peripheral uh no the one that jumped to mind weirdly was uh and and it kind of came up earlier in this episode out of this world which was uh this side scrolling game that came out in the mid 90s i got it at a eb games and had no idea what it was i don't even remember why we bought it my brother and i but it's this amazing game where you're just a guy that's dropped into an alien planet with and had no idea what it was. I don't even remember why we bought it, my brother and I. But it's this amazing game where you're just a guy that's dropped into an alien planet with no context or no idea of what's going on. And you just sort of have to figure out the systems of this universe.

The moment that jumps to mind is there's a moment where you get dropped into a tank and all the buttons in front of you are all alien buttons and you have no idea what any of the buttons do i haven't played it since i was a kid but like the memories i have for that game are like so strong they're like sense of mystery and like wonder so i'm like a little bit terrified that it wouldn't necessarily age well but i did a whole eric chahi replay last year uh great news that game still is fucking awesome it's still right it takes a while to like get used to the controls and there's a few well but i did a whole eric chahi replay last year uh great news that game still is fucking awesome it's still right it takes a while to like get used to the controls and there's a few like

fiddly annoying bits but like you talk about that sense of mystery and discovery and like danger and like the the feeling of powerlessness like that game is on point it's worth noting he just released a new game called paper beast which i haven't played yet but it's really seems like it's a departure i believe yeah big big uh heads up for anybody who has not played this game uh or has not played old point and click games or just adventure games or anything like dragon's lair uh very very hard to get into in control and nothing like what you think of when you think of modern video games so no uh which game it's like prince of persia i mean i feel like a lot of people have played like old prince of persia oh yeah yeah yeah heart of

darkness is the game that inspired that uh return trip through eric chahi's body of work for me last year and uh that game is so special and amazing and i have so many fond memories of it but yeah it's it controls let's do a chahi mini i would do I would do a Chahi series, dog. He's got the kind of catalog that we could digest. I wanted to real quick jump in with some, we asked for game recommendations, stuff that's a little bit off the radar, and

you all sent in a lot of stuff too that I wanted to highlight because I had not heard much about them, but they sound very cool. This was from Charlie. I want to put in my recommendation for a great indie game from 2020, The Procession to Calvary. It is a point-and-click adventure set inside real Renaissance art paintings where you play a battle-hungry woman looking for excuses to murder people. It takes about two hours to get through, and it's genuinely laugh-out-loud funny.

Wow, that sounds really cool. Okay. Yeah, it sounds great. The other one uh this is from kevin said there's an early access game called grift lands on steam yeah with how much y'all's talked up monster train and slay the spire i'm surprised i haven't heard anything from you on this one yet it takes the best parts of those games and somehow puts it in the framework of a narrative that lasts for an hour can be partially can be partially different every time highly this is one of them clay games this is this is uh yeah yeah it's been i feel like it's been in the works for a bit but

like it's uh a deck building uh game where you have like you know deck building style combat but there's also uh card based like dialogues like the game is broken down between those two i've i've not played it i've just been kind of like watching it from afar because i think it's still in early access but it is uh it sounds very very very cool i have heard lots of uh lots of buzz about it and uh honestly i'm i'm overdue to uh check out. Yeah, I got one more question for you. This is from Ash, the gay-ass punk girl. Ash asks, what's your favorite game so far of 2020 and why? I think this is a great question for us because we're about at that midpoint.

And I'm curious where all your heads are at because in only a few months, the bloodbath begins in which only one of us takes a victory for choosing the best game of the year yeah it's i i cannot as much as i want this to be competitive i cannot think of anything that comes close to animal crossing yeah i mean there are games that i are close ish but i agree with gr. I think Animal Crossing, without a doubt, is my game. I don't even play that that much. And like a lot of the people,

my wife, Rachel, has more or less dropped off. We were talking about that because it's the first game she's ever gotten into to this depth. And it's like, hey, I don't like it anymore. And it's like, yeah, that happens. I mean, look at your play time and you could appreciate.

Yeah, I know. No, I'm not saying it is a failure because of that. But I feel like that has opened the door for other games to come in and like honestly can i be honest i think carrion is up there for me carrion's probably yeah i fucking i fucking loved carrion but uh will you all please someone i know you wouldn't play the under presents because you don't like me as a person would you please put some time into monster train It is my favorite game of the year so far in 2020. It makes Animal Crossing look like dog shit because it didn't have any monsters in it at all, pretty much.

And all zero trains. It's all planes. No monster plane? I think not. I played the beta of what will probably be my game of the year this week, and it's called Fall Guys. will probably be my game of the year this week and it's called fall guys and it is oh it is it is just the most delicious video game and it is exactly what i needed right now just pure joy and it is a last person standing game i believe it's 60 people in a match it's a series of rounds kind of like a game show. You play as effectively like little clay models.

Like what was that game where you, uh, Game Beasts? And you, most of the stages are like, hey, race to the end of this while dodging all these obstacles, wipeout style. Yo, it is so fun and so funny. And I don't know how they will balance it because there are already some things that people can do to really break it. Mainly, there are people who wait at the finish line like bodyguards and will try to hold you from crossing the finish line,

which at first I found very annoying and then I found to actually be kind of wonderful in the same way that American Gladiators is wonderful. Then you have these expert players who are like, oh, the last test. I gotta get past Blaze and Rocket. And oh my gosh, it's colorful and vibrant and happy. And nobody can talk to you while you play it.

They can just emote at you. It's the best. And I can't wait for all of us to have an episode about it. Yeah, that'll be a fun. It's out soon, right? The fourth? Yeah, it's out very, very is there can we flip it just a little bit what's left in 2020 that you guys are looking forward to i think cyberpunk is probably like the biggest big game that's supposed to come out this year yeah cyberpunk i think that nintendo's like

whole fall catalog is a total mystery right now, which I'll tell you, I'm really looking forward to a final fantasy crystal Chronicles. I loved that game on GameCube and I think they're doing actually something kind of cool with it. It's got online multiplayer that you can play across the switch 3ds and iOS. Is that right? Yes.

Yeah. It's yeah. It's on. Oh no, no, no. I'm sorry. It's a PS4 Nintendo switch and iOS and it's all cross cross play,

which is like kind of wild, but I'm looking forward to that. I mean, it Switch, and iOS. And it's all cross-play, which is kind of wild. But I'm looking forward to that. I mean, it's a 15-year-old game that they're remastering, so I don't know if it counts. I mean, you got... There's a lot. You got frigging Rogue Legacy 2, which is probably going to be goatee material.

Also, Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Destiny 2 Beyond Light, Watch Dogs Legion. Marvel Avengers. I want that to be good. You want to hear a prediction that that'll get bumped? Oh, no. I will bet everything on it not getting bumped.

Oh, good. It's going to happen. That one? Star Wars Squadrons, which I've heard really, really good things about. And then, y'all, for me, WWE 2K Battlegrounds. That does look very funny.

No, the spiritual sequel to WWE All-Stars, one of the best wrestling games of all time. Yeah, that looks truly, truly horrible. Maybe also the best game title of 2020, Kingdoms of Amalur re-reckoning coming out September 7th

it's really confusing when I get that in my emails I'm like what is this responding to my reckoning emails Halo Infinite that little game just those little consoles let's be done this has been such a great show i'm so excited about video games there's so many more great games to come so many great games have already

passed next week uh we'll be talking about the best mechanic ideas in the good ideas ideas in bad games good ideas we are so prepared yes we're ready for it didn't just come up with it for a few minutes before um justin justin you won't be here for that conversation do you want to just drop one right now um but don't say dark void because i want to go in on dark void then i don't have one yes dark sector it had a glaive that you could throw through elements and attack enemies with them then glaive would come back to you and kick ass. I feel like this is going to be a heavy user interaction

episode because there's infinite ideas that you can talk about. Your favorite game mechanics or ideas in what is otherwise not a good game. Send those to mail at besties.fan besties.fan is where you can find our show and you can follow and listen for free. On Spotify, please share that link around with folks folks or you can send us ideas on twitter at

the besties pot leave it there the besties pod there's also a link there our pin tweet is a link to sign up for our mailing list so you can get all the real behind the scenes dirt we really trash each other that's going to do it for us for this week. So until next time, thank you for joining us and be sure to join us next time for the besties. Because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's

best games? The Besties is a Spotify original podcast in association with Fox Media. The show is edited by Jelani Carter and produced by Ben Honsley. Besties!