The Besties - The Besties 65 - Attack of the Giant Monsters from Outer Space

Episode Date: July 26, 2013

The theme of this week's Besties is giant monsters. The gang discusses kaiju, space ants and malevolent monolithic mega corps from the not-so-distant future. Like the summer's big films, a number of recent game releases are sci-fi allegories about the way we live now. Or in the case of Attack of the Friday Monsters, the way we lived way back when. We also talk about the week's big news: Microsoft's indie marketplace strategy. But the monsters are the thrust of the episode. I should probably mention there's another large monster that makes an appearance. It's possible you've met him before. He's from New York and has a long neck. I'll let him introduce himself. 3:30 - Best latest strategy update from Microsoft (Xbox One indie self-publishing) 15:00 - Best game you can't buy in the US (Earth Defense Force 4) 22:15 - Halftime! 28:20 - Best game you can buy in the US, unexpectedly (Attack of the Friday Monsters) 37:05 - Best mechanic with the worst implementation (Remember Me) 45:15 - The winner is ... Theme song by Ian Dorsch Get the show: Download MP3" Subscribe to the podcast (RSS) Subscribe on iTunes 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!

Where are you going on vacation, Justin? Beautiful Savannah, Georgia. Wait, is it? Okay, so that's the city. Savannah, Georgia. Is that the city that Walking Dead ends in? Is that a spoiler? Yes, yes, yes.

Are you going to visit all the hot spots? They actually do capture, I had Sid look at it because we've been there a few years in a row. They have the street where you first meet. All right. The street where you first meet the woman with the pickaxe climbing thing. Yeah. The street where you first meet her is actually based on River Street. It's a bourbon street in New Orleans.

No, it's River Street. It's a street along the river. It's a bourbon street in New Orleans. No, it's River Street. It's a street along the river. It's actually modeled pretty closely. Where the swamp people come and play down with their gators in the Zydeco. Okay. Come on to buy y'all with me on the hovercraft. Right? I don't know why there's a hovercraft.

Gonna boil us a pot of frogs. This is all Louisiana, though. This is not Georgia. Gonna eat their little leggies up. Y'all seen that movie Princess and the Frog? Okay. It's not Disney's finest animated film, but it'll do in a pinch. Okay. My name is Justin McElroy and I know the best thing of the week.

My name is Griffin McElroy and I know the best thing of the week. My name is Christopher Plant and I know the best thing of the week. My name is Griffin McElroy, and I know the best thing of the week. My name is Christopher Plant, and I know the best thing of the week. My name is Ross Frostick, and I know the best thing of the week. Wait, game of the week. Game of the week. No. You've made it once again to the besties, where every Friday we talk about the latest in sports,

water sports, polo, football, soccer, hockey. Polo shirts. Shirts. Bells. in sports, water sports, polo, football, soccer, hockey, sports. Polo shirts. Shirts. Bells. Mangoes. I know where this is going. No, don't do it.

Upgrades to Tom Nook's store. We're done. Talk about it all here on The Besties. This week we're going to delve into video games a little bit. Who's been playing something this week they'd going to delve into video games a little bit um who's been playing something this week they'd like to talk about with me i haven't been playing too much new stuff i did pick up critter crunch in the steam sale for $1.50 which is rather nice but that's an old game so i'm

not gonna bring it what i did though it looks so charming oh my god it's the cutest is that the is that the puzzle one that cappy did or yeah capyappy Bearer. It's Cappy Bearer's game. It's a puzzle game wherein you are a furry guy and you make other little creatures eat themselves. It's awesome. What's that puzzle game where you're like the mama monster? Not like Lady Gaga, but you're the mama monster and you have to throw your kids across. Yeah, Chippendales Rescue Rangers.

Yeah, that's precisely what I was thinking of. Thanks, Russ. Sure. So I didn thinking of. Thanks, Russ. Sure. So I didn't play anything new, but I did play the game of reading the news. And this week I would say the best latest flip-flop of Microsoft.

Not a flip-flop. But the best, I guess, surprise announcement. Kind of. I mean, they didn't have a... Well, let me get to it, and then we'll discuss. So it was essentially their announcement that the Xbox One will support self-publishing,

and they will have a solution for just about anyone that wants to get a game on Xbox One will be able to do so through their whole system. Can we address the fact, just so I don't have to edit it out, that there is either a very persistent bird stuck in your walls or somebody is very rudely doing construction like inside of the microphone? Yeah, so we've discussed before that I live in New York City

in an apartment, and one of the issues with New York City is that I have no idea who my neighbors are, and I'm surrounded by many domiciles, whereas I'm sure your guys' houses are, what, a country mile from the nearest living person? So I don't actually know who's making the noise,

but someone somewhere within a hundred meter radius is drilling something. But I have a lot of i have a lot of bleating that i have to worry about from the goats yes and when the wind comes comes whooshing through the soy through the soybean fields yeah and i have to worry about when fresh milk danny comes by to deliver fresh milk i have to be ready to answer the door because if i miss the delivery for that week and the breeding growls of the black bear. Do you guys have issues with, like, seeding biplanes?

Like, they go over the cornfields and they just, like, shoot at people in the cornfields? No, they're all drones. Oh, groovy. They're all unmanned. So I want to bring this news item about Xbox bringing indie games back, I guess, because it's a pretty major deal. I would say their whole E3 story, I mean, I think the story that many, many people came out of E3 remembering, apart from the fact that the difference in price and stuff like that, was the fact that Sony was pushing heavy on the indie side, dedicated half of their E3 booth to indie games, whereas Microsoft had one indie game, which looked very good,

but one indie game mentioned on their stage, and that was pretty much it. I do not think that was... Well, I mean, they had a Minecraft. Booyah. I do not think that that was as big a story as the DRM. I would agree. That was a way bigger facet of how Sony was totally handing Microsoft's assets to them. The DRM was definitely a big part of it. But now that that's moot, this was, I think, another thing that people were remembering.

Honestly, when I talked about the Xbox and the PS4, I would always say, well, you know, the Xbox has, you know, some good exclusives. I'm looking forward to Dead Rising 3. But clearly the indie war would be won by Sony because they were the only ones showing indie games on their next console. Yeah. So now Microsoft is coming out and they're saying everyone's going to be free to make their own indie games. Not only that, in a surprising move,

which I actually think is very cool and forward thinking any xbox one that you purchase can actually be turned into a debug unit that you could then use to test indie games on yeah basically making it a dev kit because a lot of a lot of games can be made in like a pc environment but at some point in the development process you have to have you have to have the dev kit. Yeah, you want to be able to throw the game on there and make sure it runs and works with all the menus and everything like that. This is not just excellent news for them.

It's excellent news for us because I don't actually know how much we're allowed to talk about because usually debug units come with a pretty firm NDA. I mean, we could say that we have them and that they're a pain in the ass to get. We have them, but speaking from experience, I don't have any right now, and are some uh some are easier to get than than others some companies are way more willing to put debug units in the hands of journalists yeah like

several per outlet some are like fucking impossible i there are there are debug units for some some pieces of hardware that we still just have never been able to get. I don't think I've ever been able to get it at any outlet I've ever worked at. Yeah, so it's definitely, that's helpful to us. It sounds like that's not going to be the case with Sony. It sounds like we would need a physical PS4 debug. I'm not 100% sure of that, but that's my impression. So that is actually a boon to not only game makers but also journalists

we also got those figures from most important most importantly the only people we really care about is ourselves we got we got those figures from a source or several sources yesterday that the uh ps4 dev kits were going to be 2500 so wow now that doesn't mean that they won't. I mean, that doesn't mean you sell them to everybody. But, yeah, that's the other thing. Pretty much everybody, we're pretty sure, that's developing a PS4, like, indie game right now got those units for free on loan, which apparently Sony is, like, more than happy to give them out to people. Well, but not to tens of millions of people. I mean, I would say that's the difference is, like, Sony would physically need to mail you something or you need to spend the $2,500. would say that's the difference is like sony would physically need to mail you something or you need to spend the 2500 whereas uh for microsoft theoretically again this is all still and this is something that will not will not be ready at launch this is something that's going to come

within the year right but theoretically um pretty much anyone that wants to pay the licensing fee and if it's anything like xna which i believe is a hundred dollars a year pretty reasonable licensing fee you could then have the capability of putting your game on xbox now we don't know what limitations there are whether it'll how like we we don't know a lot of we don't know a lot so i'm not going to speculate too much but it the the um moral of the story the end result is that this is great news like there's no question this is a good move for Microsoft to make. It brings us closer to essentially having, you know,

the iOS or Android, I guess, level of freedom in terms of getting games on a system. I'm sure there will be a lot of curating, and Microsoft will highlight a lot of games. That's actually the big question for me. And why I'm a little hesitant to get too excited about the news. It's universally exciting for developers, right? Because they don't have to split their profits with another company when they fucking don't need to at all.

When they can just develop the game themselves. With another publisher. They still need to split some of the profits with microsoft obviously right right right there's there's you know a pretty flat fee for that which i imagine probably doesn't change too much from platform to platform but i really don't know it's usually 70 30 is the norm yeah um doesn't apple take a little bit more than that though for ios pretty sure it's 70 30 pretty much across the board but i'm not 100 um but it the one thing that xbox does have going for it that is a result of this this publisher model and i am not saying that

it is worth the trade-off at all i think this is a good move but it is like you can pretty much bet that most of the stuff that's going up on the store is going to be pretty fucking good not just because like microsoft has any hand in good. Not just because Microsoft has any hand in curation, but just because for people to go through the effort of the Herculean effort of getting a game on Xbox Live Marketplace, they must have some extreme faith in their product

that it's going to be able to recoup. I wouldn't necessarily say that. It sounds to me like it's just as easy of getting something on Xbox Live Indie Games, and there are a lot of crappy Xbox Live Indie Games. You're saying it's equally easy to get something on Xbox Live Indie Games as it is to get something on Xbox Live Marketplace? No, I mean, like, Xbox, what's going to be, you know, Xbox One's market. That's the impression I get.

What I'm saying is that that's something they're going to have to deal with. But at the same time, how do you deal with that without... We interviewed Mark Whitten right when this news came out yesterday, and he said that he wasn't going to create any kind of ghetto, quote-unquote, to stick indie-developed games in. manufacturers to come up with a system for sorting through the the shit for the good stuff um without sort of kowtowing to to the major players and stuff like that yeah for sure um yeah it's a lot to take in and it's not just it's not just about like how hardware works it's also about how much they support it like it's not enough just to curate it and give it placement, because Sony takes these indie developers and works with them and provides support for them, sometimes very, very directly through the Pub Fund,

and, you know, works them into their PlayStation Plus campaigns, works them into their ad campaigns. Like, I don't know. I think Microsoft is going to have to, it's not just gonna be enough for microsoft to make ease of access to their platform easy like if if i were an indie developer like i would still if microsoft doesn't answer back with that level of support then i think i would still go for sony just so that you know they're so fucking helpful yeah i think the

problem with microsoft's messaging from day one with the Xbox One is that they don't give examples of what they're actually doing. They give these very big ideas that are all paper ideas, and they say, we're not going to get into the specifics. We don't have any firm examples of what this actually means yet, but trust us. And then people freak out and they go, okay, we'll do the opposite or we'll change it. And it just keeps evolving.

So at this point, until that box comes out, I am putting little faith in everything. Or at least until they say, here's the plan and here's an example of that plan working. And I think Sony is the opposite. Sony is, like you said, they have pub fund. They've gone out and they've gotten all these indie developers to basically give them something to put on their system for the first year while all the major developers are wrapping

up whatever they have. And I think Microsoft's mistake is just continually, it's complete vagueness. And it feels like inside baseball. I mean, we get excited about this, and I know some of the developers on Twitter do, but I am sure there are more people than not who couldn't give a shit. The proof is going to be in the pudding when these games do or don't come out and do or do not perform well. I think that the trust comes in,

and Justin, you said that it's not really a reversal, and maybe not in the context of Xbox One, but I think in the context of Microsoft as a whole in terms of consoles goes. Not for PC, but for Xbox. Because the policies that Sony has incorporated into PlayStation 4 are the exact same ones that they've had for PS3 and PS Vita in terms of DRM and in terms of self-publishing while while Microsoft is basically like basically throwing everything out and and and starting over um so I I I am more worried that the Xbox One is going to come out and then we'll kind of flounder for a few months while they sort of incorporate this late-game shit

that they're trying to change. Well, I think the PS4 is going to come out and be a much more, I don't know, solid product where everything sort of works the way they've intended. I'm a Sony crony. Just say it. Just put a name to it. I'm just going to call it what it is. Sony crony. Well, that's exciting news.

I'm happy name to it. I'm just going to call it what it is. Sony Crony. Well, that's exciting news. I'm happy to hear it. Tell me, Chris Plant, what's going on with you? What's the haps in your life? I got to play a game for our Today I Played video series this week that I probably would not have played otherwise called Earth Defense Force 4. You know Earth Defense Force, force right have you played those any of those yeah why wouldn't you play this you love these games wait have you not played these

justin oh i i played uh the first one and then the terrible one after that okay yeah the one that was made by americans or you're yeah somebody yeah that bad. Yeah, so if you've never played one, you play as an Earth Defense Force, which is kind of like the Starship Troopers, but on planet Earth. And Earth is being taken over by giant bugs, basically, I'd say about the size of an RV or maybe like a city bus. And then increasingly larger robot monsters,

some the size of skyscrapers, UFOs that are about the size of the ones in Independence Day or ID4. But what makes the game so special, besides it being a buggy mess with actual bugs, those glitch bugs, I can see how I might confuse someone, is everything is destructible. Giant massive buildings come tumbling down if you shoot them with rocket launchers uh and there are dozens i guess maybe hundreds of weapons in the new one and all sorts of new characters to play as um and then characters matter they do in this one because in old uh earth depends force games you're pretty much always a pretty basic soldier. In the beta one you could kind of fly with another character. In this one they have

the soldier, they have the flying character who kind of feels like a Power Ranger. They have a kind of tank-like character who can carry lots of huge heavy weapons and basically walk through everything. And they have a support role who

can call in vehicles. so you'll pick beforehand like what type of vehicle you'd want and you will have you know a tank airlifted in and dropped on the bugs if you want um he also has the ability to nuke like an entire city block do you find the realism like too daunting well the problem is like i'm always i'm always wanting to you know blow up buildings but then like the character development is so strong and powerful it's like an ancient play you know like because i'm like oh no oh you know god can we go a single cast without some literary reference okay it's like uh it's like a thomas kinkade painting you know because the light is just too beautiful um it's the one on vita good the one on

vita is excellent it's just the one that was on 360 though pretty much like the the first one from 2006 but what what bums me out about this game or this series is i played the uh the first one on 360 like right after the console came out maybe a year year or two after. And I thought this is what action video games were going to be. Like, big open world, everything is destructible. Things, like the monsters I'm fighting, you know, they're five, six, seven gajillion times larger than I am. It just felt very big and next-gen, in scare quotes. And then no one else did it. they the the next game to do it

was this one like made by them a little game called 99 nights that game was awful dynasty warriors yeah what about dynasty warriors yeah dynasty warriors is the closest comparison but you can't like blow up a city. And it seems like everyone got so distracted with pretty graphics in linear storytelling that they didn't realize, you know, sometimes it's just fun to have absolute devastation. What about Crackdown? Crackdown's a pretty good example.

This is a slight non sequitur, but do you know what I loved about that first xbox 360 earth defense force game what it only had six achievements it had six achievements if i'm not if i'm i think i'm remembering correctly no i think you're right designed for the game six difficulty settings so like you would beat it on its easiest setting and get like 125 points and it would like I don't think they were nested, so you'd have to literally beat it on every different level. You would have to beat it six different times. That's ridiculous, because the game's so long.

The problem with the game is every level's almost the same. The monsters just get taller. And that changes, because maybe they'll throw a lot of small monsters at you and some big ones. But it's the perfect game.

I wish a new one would come out at the beginning of every console cycle because I can just pick at it for 30 minutes here and there for eight years, and I will be totally happy with that. And which is why this one's so depressing is it came out on the 4th of July in Japan, which they're taking our day. Like, if you're gonna have a game about fighting aliens from outer space and you're gonna release it on the 4th of July, it better

come out in the United States. And it didn't. It came out in Japan. They're not releasing it in America until February, six months after it came out in Japan. And by then everyone's gonna be all lovey-dovey with their new video game machines. Who's gonna play this?

I don't know. It's sad. Especially the game that looks like it should have come out in, like, 2006. Yeah. It does not look super pretty. Ah, but it's so fun. And that just bums me out. Like, it's just bad. What about Tanks, Tanks, Tanks? There's one. Ugh, that game was horrible. Yeah, real bad. And you couldn't destroy

everything. Yeah. Sorry. Yeah. i thought that game would be good but no see that's mine it's just you know it's a sad story about how japan always gets the best games how did you play it uh i downloaded it on the japanese psn store via a japanese account that i created with a fake address i yeah i didn't think you could do that in the podcast i thought they closed that loophole uh well not for me can you can you read all the yeah can you read all this characters oh yeah it's real basic stuff do you know what was sad i didn't know you could read japanese of course i can. I mean, it took, like, you know, just, I use a Game Packs, and then I, you know, kind of fumbled my way around.

I mean, they're just pictures, so you just describe what the pictures are. So, like, starfish, signpost, happy face. I don't, I, trust me, there's not a happy face. Trust me. No, I couldn't, I couldn't invert my Y axis because it's a shooter. And I figured out where the option menu was, but the option menu had like 30 different things that I could yes or no on. And then it ended up not even being something that was a yes or no question.

But don't worry, guys. I figured it out. It's probably because there isn't a character for Y, so they just say, fuck it. We're not going to let anybody change. Right. So that's mine. What's going on for halftime, you guys? Have you...

What's that? Is it the drilling again? Russ, can you turn down your mic? I think there's some drilling on your end. Oh. Yo. What? Oh. Ay-yo! Russ can you turn down your mic I think there's some drilling on your end Oh What What just happened Were you just birthed

It sounded like giving birth Hey besties It's me New York giraffe Our smoothest transition yet I just wanted to say I ain't feeling so good lately. So it's been a while since I've been around. It's been a tough couple of weeks.

Oh, it seems like only yesterday, even though we do this podcast weekly. Yes, I agree. I just wanted to say I don't know if you guys heard where I've been. It's been a bit harrowing, to say the least. To address the fact that we're talking to a giraffe? I don't even know if we did or not. I don't think maybe returning super fans know that we're talking to New York giraffe.

It's New York giraffe. Hey yo, it's me, New York giraffe. That's fine. Just for the people who might not know, you are a giraffe? Yeah, what else would I be? And where are you from i'm from long island okay got it you know it's funny in new york draft people always come around we uh we used to get a

lot of complaints about new york drafts appearances on the podcast why would they complain about me i'm i'm it's it's all right it's pretty racist we didn't address it and they stopped it's racist towards giraffes i'm a giraffe what do you want they stopped. It's racist towards giraffes? I'm a giraffe. What do you want? They stopped complaining about it, and I think the reason is they stopped listening. So, you know, people always, these things always shake out. Besties, I want to ask you a question. Yeah. Did you see my performance on July the 4th several weeks ago?

I missed that. I must have missed that. You missed it. I was here in weeks ago. I missed that. I must have missed that. You missed it. I was here in West Virginia. I don't know where it was. I had been training for months, months, for one day, July 4th. This was my one chance on Stilwell Avenue, Coney Island. Oh, yeah.

The hot dog eating contest. You did not see me perform at the hot dog eating contest? No, I only saw people with normal necks. You're right. Well, not entirely normal because they could swallow hot dogs like a snake swallowing an egg, but more normal than yours. You are 100% right. I have been training for months to get into the world famous hot dog eating contest fourth of july coney island i get there the day of i'm hot it's sweaty i'm wearing a tank top which is really tough to find

for my neck size and i go to you know sign up tank tops don't have like neck components they have a giant cavity for for next even most normal giant cavities of tank tops were are not big enough for my neck okay and i go to show up and sign up put my hoof print on one of those papers to sign up for the award for the competition and guess what they turned me away can you believe it is it because you're an herbivore and anybody with a goddamn lick of sense in their head Knows that I ain't an herbivore I eat pizza I just assumed it was cheese pizza

Sure but cheese don't grow on trees Buddy Griffin Anyway they turned me away Who's Buddy Griffin They turned me away Buddy Griffin was a vaudeville sensation in the 40s it's a private i'm a private love of new york giraffe where was i forced to go

i had to do the offshoot competition with kobayashi that no one paid attention to no one saw me perform did you guess what i broke the record. From SB Nation? What? You know that Dan Rubenstein hosted that event. I mean, I assume you know that because you were there. I was there, but I was focused on the competition. I broke the world record for hot dog eating. Uh-huh. Well, your neck is so long, you can just like jam 50 of them in there and still be like

good to go. How many did you do? Yeah. So in the course of 10 minutes, which is the norm, 1,500 hot dogs. Okay. That is to consider the current world record is Joey Chestnut with 69. So that is an impressive. But you'll know that my record is not posted anywhere.

There was not world famous ticker tape parades for me and my world record. I hope to fuck you were disqualified because that's great like non-humans shouldn't be able to participate in the thing or else like a drinking well could participate and just like somebody could throw 1500 hot dogs down a drinking well there's nothing in the rule book that says a giraffe can't participate in the competition what about just large holes in the ground can those be in the hot dog eating contest no they're not sentient anything that's sentient can perform turns out just holding the hot dogs in your neck do not count as ingesting the hot dogs technically

according to the rules that's unfair i completely But man, I would have liked to seen the vomit you did afterwards. I bet it was just a hazard. Well, truth be told, they just sort of came out as full hot dogs. They didn't really look too chewed up. Couldn't you take this to an orphanage or something? I don't know. I let people know on Twitter that they were there. I don't know if they ate them.

Just left a pile of giraffe saliva-soaked hot dogs. New York Giraffe, thank you so much. We hope that you'll never join us again, and we hope that you'll stop now. Oh, no, the window is shut on his neck again. I'm still hungry. Hopefully with enough force to sever his giraffe giraffe spinal cord new york giraffe will be back in 2014 his disembodied head is just talking lying on the carpet this is disgusting um he's

he's died before i think he's probably every time we try to kill him with fiction um I think he's probably every time we try to kill him with fiction. Let's talk about my game because it's a nice transition from Chris Plant's. I mean, the transition that has been completely wrecked by giraffe hot dogs. It's Attack of the Friday Monsters, A Tokyo Tale on the 3DS eShop. Oh, man, I heard this was good. Did you play this in Japanese? The narration in the game is Japanese by default. And by default, I mean it's the only option that you have.

Oh, wow. But there are subtitles. It is a delightful little game. If I were to give it a best designation, I would say the best length that a game has ever been given because it's uh it clocks in at just like a little over three and a half hours if you really take your time with it to to do everything that there is to do um i i reviewed the game the review should be up soon. But it is not really what I expected,

and I don't think it's going to be what most people expect when you see, like, a trailer for it. Because you see, it's about this town. Tokyo. Like, on the outskirts of Tokyo, where every Friday, giant monsters attack. Kaiju, if you will. I know that word.

I saw Pacific Rim. If you learned that word i saw during pacific rim i did um but it's not like an action game about those monsters and the you know ultra man-esque superheroes fighting them it's about a group of kids that live in that town and the story is told like entirely from their perspective, by which I mean all of the dialogue is, you know, between the kids, it's all about the wonderment and mystery of why there are monsters in this town, or it could just be about, you know, this new student who just moved in, or when you talk to the adults, like they talk to you as a kid,

like all of your interactions with this town are childish. Which is, it's super, super refreshing because it's kind of impossible not to get in that mindset. Because they never even really do fully explain why there are monsters or aliens. And the plot is like pretty nonsensical which just lends itself to you trying to interpret this i don't know madcap story it's a very difficult game to talk about as you're what are you doing you're just talking to people it's sort of it's been billed as a life sim um as somebody like just living in this town going around talking to people but like this story is actually fairly linear it's told through a series of uh quests that it actually calls episodes and

really all that you're doing the entire game is running from person to person and talking to them or maybe competing in a little um mini game there's like a little card game mini game that that is that you can play um and really you're just like running from person to person moving their individual storylines along while sort of also progressing this overarching campaign about this giant monster that's that's kind of attacking the town but nobody's ever in any imminent danger um there's also a tv show that is filmed about the monsters in this town there's also like a power plant or something in the distance that's just producing a lot of pollution.

So like it's kind of up to interpretation about what these monsters are, whether they're just an optical illusion because of this pollution or whether they're just giant props for this television show or whether they're the result of this alien invasion. And it like never really clears that up but the the angle of the game is that it's just like a nice little short little refreshing game about being a little kid it's kind of like i compared it to being in like a calvin and hobbes cartoon it kind of reminds me of costume quest like, like a Japanese idea. That's how, when you were describing it, I was thinking Costume Quest.

Minus the, you know, not so good fighting parts of Costume Quest. Yeah. But a lot of, you know, not really puzzles so much as just going from place to place in this, like, really rich world. And it's beautiful. I mean, that's the other thing is the game looks really nice what's the art style like are you talking about costume quest or are you talking about oh no well both but uh front end at monsters is um yeah the art style is great i mean this this comparison is getting super rote but until we find a better way of talking about it it's kind of what i have to say

it looks like a studio ghibli movie oh yeah that's what i was thinking it sounded like the way you're describing it sounded like totoro or something like that which is i guess appropriate because like level five did yeah but this is a millennium kitchen game um or flcl do you guys know that anime yeah fully coolly sure yeah so um i i it like looks great and the music is like absolutely fantastic. The theme song is sung by a little kid and the theme song is almost entirely about how much his parents love him, which is like, it's, it's so nice. It's really, it's, it's a very, very nice game. It's just kind of like,

what's frustrating is that you fall in love with it so, so, so quickly and so deeply and like the world is so nice and it's it's kind of this little nugget of virtual tourism that persona four was actually really good about or like you felt like you were a member of this community and you knew everybody um but unlike persona which gives you like a shit ton of things to do and ways to interact with the town really the only thing you have to do is go around and talk to people to move this story forward or play this one card game. Yeah, I think if Persona was three hours long, I probably would have liked it a lot more.

Because that's about as long as I played it. Right. It doesn't overstay its welcome, though. I don't know. I guess it's the better kind of frustration to have than a game that does go on for 100 hours and, like, you feel like you've just been doing the same shit over and over again

compared to a game that, like, just doesn't give you any more once you reach that point where it's... you're just so deep in love with it. Yeah, that's how I felt about Limbo. Limbo was, like, the perfect length of a game. Yeah. It's not like it's probably going to be fairly forgettable like i'm i'm not going to bring it to my game of the year lists or whatever at the end of the year but like it really is nice that there are games like that like the the guild series has been super good about delivering these kinds of games like starship dam ray and um that game was weird that game was weird and but it was like neat

and not super expensive and like i'm glad that that there is some sort of outlet for people to to make super experimental games like this for the 3ds um because like if you are a collector of oddities who like relishes in shit like mr mosquito or guitar room and like it's it's this definitely is gonna what i really like fill that void for you yeah what i like about it is that it's not that weird sometimes what i can find frustrating have you finished it no i'm not super far it gets fucking weird okay then i'll then i'll stop what i was gonna say but yeah i i i'm disappointed there aren't more games like that that aren't in a relatively normal world because i feel like the indie or like small game default is to just make it as weird as possible. Right. I don't know.

It's not weird in the traditional sense. Like, it's art style and, like, the mood of the game is actually fairly straightforward. It's very Goonies-esque. And, like, it's very easy to appreciate it at face value for what it is. It's just the storytelling that it dips into gets pretty out there. Is the pirate ship surprising? Yeah, it comes out of nowhere.

It's on the eShop. It's $8. I like it a lot. I kind of wish they'd release all seven of the Guild games on a single purchase cartridge, because I would really dip my beak into that. But I think that's kind of contrary to the idea of the series. That sounds fantastic. I'm glad I already got it. I'm looking forward to playing it soon.

And I encourage everyone else to do the same, because I get a cut. I don't. But it'd be nice. I want to talk about my game. It's Remember Me. Do you guys remember that? I super don't, actually. Yeah, Remember Me didn't make much of a splash

when it first came out. In fact, I just got around to finishing it. And man, were my feelings ever mixed about that. I want to talk about the best best mechanic with the worst implementation uh and and that was the idea of memory glitches so to step back a bit in the world of remember me you are a memory hunter who memories have sort of been commoditized so people can get their memories changed their memories removed total recall essentially yeah there you go and you are a memory hunter one of your abilities in in this game

is to remix someone's memory and what that means is you leap into their memory you're watching a memory they have and you can alter certain things in that memory to try to get a different outcome. When you do this, are you saying, Remix! I was privately, of course, saying Remix. Nill and the lead character does not. What she does say in another point of the game

is this little red riding hood has a basket full of kick-ass. So in case you're wondering about whether or not you should play this game, the answer is almost certainly no. But that's a really neat idea for a mechanic. And in what sort of like de rigueur for, remember me, it is not well implemented. remember me it is not well implemented um you jog through these scenes which can be up to five minutes long by twirling the left stick like in a rewind like like you're jogging you know uh like rewinding left or right by by twisting the stick and you can often go minutes through this video where you're or it's a memory i, but you're rewinding and fast

forwarding. Uh, and you're literally having to do that for long stretches of time, just sitting there rewinding the, the scene. Uh, and you have no idea of what you're actually trying to do or what you're trying to trigger. And there are usually, you know, six or seven different glitches that you can trigger. And there's some combination of them that, that let you progress. So in one scene, I had to, in one of the earlier remixes, I had to convince a man that he had killed his wife. So the scene at first was about her leaving him and he had a loaded gun on the table. And so basically what I had to do is I had to knock over a wine bottle using that memory trigger, and then take the safety off of his gun

and then retract a stand, retract a cup holder, basically, so that when he fell on the wine bottle, he wouldn't kill himself by falling and hitting his head. And you're given no insight into how these all work together. So you're basically getting this really into how these all work together so you're basically getting this really neat mechanic with this really neat idea and and oh by the way when you rewind

past a glitch you actually undo it and it takes about 15 seconds of just sitting there rewinding the thumbstick uh to undo the glitch so it is the most ponderous sort of, uh, mechanic. It's, it sounds like the mechanics from this great idea. Like, is it similar to ghost trick?

It's, that's not a terrible comparison, but, uh, sorry, that, that was less generous than I meant to be. It's not a bad comparison,

but you, it's the act of actually having to physically rewind through the scenes. It's this great example. It's boring and it sucks and your thumb hurts. And it's this great example of like, hey, we got a good idea. Would that be fun? I don't know. It seems cool.

Do it. You want it to be easy to rewrite somebody's memories. Not everything in your life is going to be handed to you on a fucking silver platter job that's true that's true i wish it was more fun to experiment with these scenes i guess it's the problem because they're so sort of poorly constructed you know sometimes you'll you'll like trigger a uh an electric socket like i'm gonna short that out okay cool so you watch the entire scene and nothing happens and nothing interacts with it so it's like well okay why did i short

that out i should rewind and see what i did wrong but if you rewind past that it undoes it so if you figure out later what you need to do you have to rewind past the second thing you did rewind all the way to the electric socket trigger that and then fast forward back again and trigger the second glitch to see if that's the right combination if it's not you have to start all the way back but it's somebody who fucking loves old Sega CD FMV games like

that's what this sounds like like what the fuck why would you not like this that's literally all these games were they're made these people are made of polygons Griffin if they're real people we'd probably be having a Game of the Year conversation right now. Anyway, that's Remember Me. It's such a frustrating game. The combat's really neat. There's this neat...

You can personalize your combos, so the button presses are always the same. But you have this thing called pressins that you... Pressings? Pressings. Like, yes, pressings that you connect to. Like, you have a stock of them, and you can insert them into the combo wherever makes sense. So you have, like, three X button pressings that refill your health.

You're going to have to say this, because it just sounds like you're saying P-R-E-S-S-I-N. That's what it sounds like. P-R-E-S-S-I-N apostrophe. That's what it sounds like. P-R-E-S-S-E-N Oh, that's much better. Okay. It's not a word. Give that button, give that there button some pressins, and you'll knock these dudes right out.

I mean, it is called, it is connected to button pressins, it's called pressins, so it's not a good name. Oh god, now, I want to make a video game just so i can include that in the tutorial if you want if you want to make mario jump on that goomba's head just make him do a couple bite impressions hold down that b button give that a button some pressings you're gonna jump super good and super high it is it is a neat idea though so that's cool. Like, you can make a whole combo that's gonna, like, refill your health and, you know, whatever.

Other gamey bullshit. I just want Capcom so badly to do a new IP. That's a new IP. That works out really well for them, is what I'm saying. What about Dark Void? When was the last time that happened? No, this absolutely fits into the Dark Void canon. That's what I'm saying.

It's like Capcom, with these new IPs, Capcom's like, well, you can get to the end, publish it. Yeah. You can finish it. Let's get that out. What was the last one? Dead Rising was the last time they actually had a good new IP? Like, new IP that was good that they made? I mean, out what was the last one dead rising was the last time they like actually had a good new ip like new ip that was good that they made uh i mean dead rising's last one i can think of dark void was like this great wonderful idea that is bad that looked that got me so so so

hyphy i was i was more hyphy for that game than i've been for any other game that came out this you don't understand the heartbreak we felt in the press when that game came out. Just when I played that game together, I think it was over a Christmas break or something like that, we reviewed that game together, and man, just the self-justification that tried to go on from level to level.

Like, well, maybe we'll get the jetpack soon and keep it this time. Like, oh, fuck. Nope. Nope, didn't happen. Maybe the next air combat will be fine didn't couldn't actually the last ace combat game was pretty good oh yeah but that's not that's not a new capcom but anyway that was namco bandai wasn't it yep namco yeah yep then what are you

talking about so who's gonna win this week i think gr Griffin wins. You know, I got to be honest. It did seem, that seemed charming. I'm into it. Yeah, okay. Congratulations, Griffin. I don't want to, no, I don't want this one. Why? Okay. Why?

I'm just saying my shelf is getting like super full. I make myself a little trophy every time. Are you worried about like hanging stuff off the walls and not having like good support structure i'm more worried that my house is going to become like too valuable and like it's just going to become a really big target because of all the platinum for robbers our budget's in trouble too paying for all these trophies i make them out of purest platinum yeah um okay so you lose griff. Congratulations. Who won, though?

The rest of us. The last of us won. The last of us. You wasted another hour listening to Besties. We're sorry about squandering your precious life minutes, but we hope you'll do it again with us next Friday. In the meantime, go to Polygon.com. We got lots of great stuff.

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