The Besties - The Besties 68 - Down in a hole

Episode Date: August 16, 2013

The gang gets back together before being dashed apart once more. This week on The Besties, the whole gang is back together, which is exciting because the next few weeks will be rife with missing members. So enjoy it while you can! We also get a glimpse into what it takes to drive Griffin mad. 4:05 - Best MetroidVania Spelunky Minecraft (SteamWorld Dig) 13:45 - Best broken piece of shit that oh my god I love please don't leave me (PayDay 2) 27:50 - Halftime! 33:45 - Best way to feel like a monster (Papers, Please) 41:15 - Best example of a forever runner that doesn't feel cheap (Knightmare Tower) 48:00 - 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!

Going on a trip in a couple weeks. Where are you going? Lovely, beautiful South Dakota. What's there? All sorts of things. They have the heads on the mountain. Rushmore is there? Rushmore.

We're always moving that. I'm never sure where it is. Yeah, it's in South Dakota now. It's on DVD and Blu-ray too. They've got the Native American guy in the mountain. I forget what his name is. Wow. I think.

Iron Eyes Kobe. And that's pretty much it. Worth noting that I will be seeing none of this stuff. Soleil Moon Frye is also there. I won't be seeing any of this stuff because I'll just be in a small town called Tyndall that I've never heard of where my girlfriend's 90-year-old grandma lives for five days. I feel a Woody Allen movie coming on. I'll tell you what.

Fish out of water. That there is a Jewish person. No, I'm sure they're very nice. What Woody Allen movie was that a spoof of? Every one of them. Hate speech show. A spoof of that there is a Jewish person.

His seminal 87 classic. I'm sure they're very nice and you know her granddaughter's Jewish so that's probably a sign that they don't mind them I'm looking forward to it if only because it's nice to get out of the city but I also am terrified

of rural areas. Like if there's no lights outside. What's this place called again? It's called South Dakota. South Dakota. Do you know... So you know how there's two different Dakotas? There's like the good Dakota and the evil Dakota? Yeah.

He's going to... The good one. Dakota Fanning. South is the one where everything happens. Dakota Fanning is the bad one. Now boarding last train to Dakota Fanning. 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. That was good. I wish you

did that every time. Better. I'll slow it down next time. Okay. Justin, you want to, like, do the show? Are you googling more South Dakota facts? I bet you are. I'll tell you guys about the official website

of Tyndall South Dakota, which is, to answer your question, prominently feature Comic Sans. I have not. You've done more research on this trip than I have. You've got to be ready. What if you went there and missed Tyndall Community on the Rise, a big sign

outside the town? Imagine. Wait, are they promoting the sign on the website? Yeah. The first picture was the sign. Make sure not to miss this sign. Tyndall just got Dippin' Dots, and they're so psyched about it, and I feel bad because it's like that's not a thing that exists outside of the Dakotas. This town has everything.

Look at these pictures. They got a railroad. They got a water tower. They have a sign for Jim Mars Pepsi. This is important, guys. Do you know of any 3DS or Vita games coming out in the next two weeks? I might die. This is the besties where we talk about the latest and greatest in art, opera, history, fashion, social studies, geography, algebra.

It's a school. It's an hour-long podcast school school but today we're going to dip into the world of video games i actually have can i start because i actually have a game for you to play russ oh my god great there's actually there's actually a few there's been some pretty high prof releases lately with uh you know dragon's crown and mario and luigi uh dream team which i don't care for that Dragon's Crown business. But there's a game that you probably haven't heard of because it hasn't been marketed at all,

and it's delightful, and it's on the 3DS eShop, and normally you can't say those two things together about the same thing, and it's called SteamWorld Dig. Do you guys know anything about this game? I know Steam, and I know Dig. And the world is, like, where we live as a race. Okay, but is it, like, is it The Dig on Steam?

Like, released on Steam? Yeah, it's just people, like, talking shit about digital distribution platforms. No, I meant the LucasArts adventure game, The Dig. I'm so, I was bored with this line of dialogue like two lines ago tell me about this game that you have it's a 3ds e-shop game it uh was made by a i believe a company from gothenburg called image informed gothenburg gothenburg it's blowing up right now i don't know it's a city in sweden i can can i can just give me like a minute i'm getting a little idd i'm sorry god it's crazy um i'm batman that's where that's where ghost is

uh the guys are making the new need for speed there's some other companies up there anyway uh steam world dig it's an e-shop game that basically takes every genre that's like becoming popular in games right now and mashes them all into one super game and surprisingly it works really well so you play this robot who has inherited his uncle's uh mine in this sort of desolate western town also populated by robots can i stop you right there you fucking can't r because you're going to say something that's like... I'm not. This is a genuine question. Is this Rango?

Is it like Rango robots? No, that had nothing to do with it. Okay. How does a robot have an uncle? Did the uncle make the robot? So anyway, in this game, you're a robot miner, and it is one...

It's sort of one part Spelunky. Okay, I'm sold yeah uh one part minecraft one part metroidvania so you have this this uh city where like you do all your business you can buy upgrades you level up you sell the ore that you find in the mines um and then you go into the mines and the mines are separated into these like separate overworlds with doors into other dungeons sort of hidden in them um so the whole game is you dig downward um in sort of minecrafty style um where like blocks take a certain number of hits to get through and you can see like where the ore deposits and gyms are um so you have to kind of dig your way over to them but you have to be kind of strategic because

obviously you can't dig upward um it's a 2d it's a 2d game um and wait why can't you dig upward well i mean because just gravity and like physics and i mean you can dig upward but you can't like keep going in that direction because you can't fly so you uh you you know you you go through these excursions where you go down into the mines you find stuff you bring it back to the surface you get money to buy upgrades you can upgrade your um your pickaxe so you can dig through stuff faster um but hidden throughout these dungeons are these metroidvania style upgrades like you get a drill, so you can drill through solid rocks. And you find, you know, like a steam-boosted jump that lets you get some more upward mobility.

And the mining that you do is, like, persistent. So part of the game is sort of maximizing how efficiently you can get stuff from the mines and then bring it back to the surface to, to sell and buy new upgrades. Um, so you can just like dig one pit that just goes like straight down. And that can be like your entry point into the deepest parts of the mine. Um,

and then you can like buy these teleporters to get back up to the top, or you can, you know, just huff it to get up there. But is it randomly generated? Like Spongy? Uh, not every can, you know, just hoof it to get up there. Is it randomly generated, like, Spelunky? Not every time you go in, but the mine is randomly generated between each game. So, like, my mine and your mine aren't going to look anything alike.

Oh, interesting. But it has some of the same sort of Spelunky rules, where, like, if you fall too far, like, you'll die. You have a torch torch basically that lasts a certain amount of time and you have to keep finding things to um keep your fuel going or else things will go dark and then you're basically like fucked you're gonna get trapped in the mine but it has this really um rewarding and addicting hook of finding upgrades to let you go deeper into the mine uh buying upgrades finding treasures finding these little mini dungeons that are hidden um all all throughout

the mines and um i don't know it's just a really satisfying exploratory game it's only eight bucks on the i like this art style yeah it's got sort of got sort of a steampunky art style. It's kind of like, what was that game? Stranger? Oddworld Stranger's Wrath? Yeah. Kind of like that. A little bit, yeah.

But 2D. It's great. And like, I don't know. I feel like eShop success stories. Like, we've talked at length about Nintendo's, how they support indie games on their platforms and i feel like wii u does a little bit better job than the e-shop does but like it's crazy that like they the developers have said that this the game has been a success

and that they're going to release more games even though they've been releasing ios games for a while and none of those were as successful as this eShop game, which is, like, fucking bonkers to me. But it's exactly the kind of game that works on handheld systems. Rostig and I were just talking about that, and maybe just something to step on for a second. Step on? Talk about? Yeah, let's step on it. Yeah, let's step on it.

But what happened to iOS in the last year? It seems like so much talent has bled over into either PC with Steam or even like 3DS marketplace where those type of games make money. I don't know. It's like free-to-play actually ended up doing damage to iOS that I really thought it wouldn't. That's that race to the bottom. I think it's hard to make money on iOS. I think it's a huge gamble.

You either have a hit or you've wasted a lot of time. I think it's not that there's a lack of success. It's just that it's not spread around very much. Because you have games like Candy Crush, which make a fucking bajillion dollars. And are bad. I mean, are bad games. It's not a bad there it's not a it's a hey no no no i mean it it's a it's a the the design of that game is criminal i mean yeah it's not just like simple it's it's it's exploitative yeah it's really my my wife swore a blood oath against

against the people who made the game like she it's a it's a really terrible sort of system they've laid how many people have come into the hospital with like bad candy crush issues they've they've been crushed by candy oh it's a serious problem i'm tired of us just joking about it all the time i don't i think i think that it's like the opposite situation. They couldn't be more dissimilar at the eShop and the App Store because there is such a hunger for releases. Not just, I mean, definitely more, I would say, on Vita than on 3DS. But when there is a good game on ehop like i feel compelled to buy it just because like it's been a while since i played anything on this on this device for a while yeah for sure you know

this this digging game reminds me of a story okay there's a man in a hole and he's stuck in this hole and a priest walks by yeah and the priest throws a bible into hole and the guy's like what am i supposed to do with this he's like read and god will let you out of the hole yeah then a banker walks by and throws some money down the hole and he's like what am i supposed to do with this and the guy's like turns out it was a water i don't know you could buy your way out of the hole and then his friend walks by and jumps in the hole and the guy's like why'd you jump in this hole and the friend's like well i've been down here before and i know the way out yeah and the weird thing about that entire story is there were no footsteps in the sand

think about it also um a month later they both died they both died in the hole because they were trapped in the fucking hole like they tried to climb up each other but the hole was way too deep guess three years later they both went on a date with the same girl and the next day she went to their apartment and there was just an old woman there and the girl was like but they left their varsity jackets and she's like they died in the hole 30 years ago fucking crazy just really chew on it god bruce i'm glad you brought that story because it was like germane and it had like important messages that influenced me

for the rest of my life. Can I tell you about a game? I want to tell you about a game. For Josh Lyman and Leo McGarry. Is it an actual game and not an anecdote from West Wing? So, on this one time, Josh is walking down the hall and he's like Bobbity boop boop, the president! I didn't watch West Wing? So, on this one time, so Josh is walking down the hall, and he's like, Bobbity boop boop, the president!

I didn't watch West Wing. Josh is a character, right? You fuck, you asshole. Here are two things I don't care about, West Wing and Mass Effect. Goodbye, followers. I started a Facebook group to make Griffin watch West Wing. That's what it's called. It worked. I'll do the same thing to you,

plant. I'll do it. I'll do it. it gosh it's on netflix now you have no excuse go on okay we're gonna talk about uh the most broken awful piece of shit that i want to keep playing forever and ever and i just hope they repair it so i can love it with all my heart uh and that game is called payday 2 or the game that made justin get mad and not play with me anymore. Oh, my God, this game. Okay, so the game, when it works, is excellent. And if you don't know anything about Payday, which is totally possible, is the original was a four-player cooperative heist game.

It was okay. And it had kind of a Left 4 Dead vibe where, you know, you'd start a heist, and then all these cops would come at you, and you'd have to kill hundreds of cops. Okay. So fast forward to Payday 2. Fast forward to their funerals. Yeah. To the Irish funeral and then barfing in the gutter.

Racist. Jesus Christ. That's not racist. It's the wire. Guys, guys i watch television so i know how the police work just not always not the good television right okay um wow so payday 2 uh they brought on some development talent from uh the battlefield folks and they made a game that sure like you can still shoot cops which yeah i guess that's fun but the game is like a true heist game when it works well you have four different kind of

classes that all have these special abilities and you have the ability to rob banks and it feels like you're robbing a bank like you can scream at civilians and make them get on the ground and tie them up. Some people can use radio jammers to make cell phones not work or police pagers not work. Wasn't this all in the first game? So, it all actually works now. Okay. And it all feels realistic. Another addition is, like, when you break into a big safe, you put the cash into bags,

and then you have to kind of move the bags because they have weight. That wasn't in the last game? I don't believe it was. I believe you just picked up the bag. Sounds like you didn't do any research. Here's the thing, guy. It's really, really crazy when you are in something, you're playing a game and it feels so much like

what you imagined a real heist to be. And you can play a first-person shooter and not have it be violent. And the other crazy thing about this is there are only so many levels, but how those levels are organized is procedurally generated. And when I say that, I mean like,

the doors inside of the bank will be in different places or where the vault is maybe different or how many how many uh doors you have to bust through to get to the vault is uh is unique uh there's there's all these things that change where the cameras are how quickly the police respond to an alarm where alarms are all of it in one scene is the like, then an ice cream parlor? Yeah, and then there's the time when you go into the bank and it's an ice cream parlor and you're just like,

well, this is a surprise. Get it out before it melts. And they're like, why'd they pay me $20,000 to steal all this ice cream? They could have just bought ice cream. I'm hungry. It's Cold Stone.

I'm trying to snack over here. Okay, the plan is to melt it and then we'll refreeze it. Listen to me. This place has the fucking country's best yogurt. It's in the name. Country's best. It is neat.

Justin, you can talk about what happened with you. It's just none of it works. I mean, you said it all works now, but it doesn't work. It does work. It's really hard to learn works. I mean, you said it all works now, but it doesn't work. It does work. It's really hard to learn, and you need experienced people. Okay, okay, point of order. Okay, go ahead. When we try to do a smash and grab mission with three human beings.

Okay, yes, this is true. And one AI bot, you can't do it because by smash and grab, what they mean is you run in, you smash some stuff, you steal some jewelry, and you leave. And you do it before the cops can show up. Only we all did that, and that's good. And then the AI bots are like, hold on, wait a second. I got to find that Sanio I was looking for. And he just pull lamps as the cops come.

Like, you cannot do it with the AI partner. So he stands there, or? Well, originally they weren't going to have AI, and the community was like, no, you have to have AI. I've played a bit, and I can say the good news is they don't have AI. Yeah. They have husks.

That's it. They have husks. They have virtual standing corpses. they have simulcra yeah yeah so it's more like than we thought yeah so i i can uh i can get past that to some degree that it was can you play without ai people if you wanted if you just had two people online and there are videos of people completing incredibly complex missions with one person, but that is like, that's a novelty. You're playing it to push the limits of what the game

is meant to be. Can you throw bags to one another and create a water moving chain? Absolutely. Not with the AI, but you can do it with humans. The AI will look at you like you are a moron. You threw the money! We gotta take it! You dropped Chris! Chris, come back! You threw the money we gotta take it you dropped chris chris come back and drop the money

when when one ai goes down in the middle of like a crowded street and then like the other two ai go running for it can you like finish the mission if one guy dies yes you can and don't you get more money that way um no it just all gets gets dispersed. That's how real bank robberies work. What is crazy to me about this game is that it is like, I think you're understating the learning curve. It's fucking impenetrable because playing by yourself to get good is not an option because it's not even close to what playing with other people is like because the AI is just fucking miserable on both ends.

Like, you and your three guys will, like, all aim shotguns at the front door of a building and cops will be like, oh, a door. Cool. Let me just get right in this door. And, oh, nope. Fuck. Yeah, but don't they, like, go in different doors and stuff? Yeah. Yeah, sometimes.

Sometimes they'll spawn out of like a fucking cop will come out of the freezer like what were you doing in there dog but not only that what's crazy is that you have this safe house that has all of these elements that are supposed to be like tutorials that don't fucking like are not practically useful at all. Like, they may teach you, yeah, you can put drills on safes, which, by the way, is, like, the least fun element of any game ever. It's basically, here's a two-minute timer that's going to keep stopping, so you have to kind of babysit it. Oh, God.

It's not as... I thought that that added kind of a cool tension to it. Yeah, there's a lot of... A lot of these elements are good, and it is impenetrable without help, but having played a lot of the beta too, I was surprised how eager the community was to teach new players how to play.

I think because it is so difficult, I think a lot of the players, especially high-level players, take pride helping like somebody who's a level zero complete you know a really difficult mission on the highest you know difficulty level and because if they do it gives that person so much experience and money and it also feels like a crazy accomplishment because even the crappiest player is better than the aod whereas i feel like in league of legends if you go in there and you're a newbie you're punished people will yell at you and call you names and you'll cry and go home and take like a long shower because you're so sad about it yeah okay so none of this gets to the

point of why i actually have an issue with the game. Because I can get past all this. None of the ten things that they mentioned? The real issue of all of this is you get to a point where it all works very well. But when I was playing it, it would boot out of the game at the very last second. Oh, man. It sounds so smitten. And take my loot. And you get one special piece of loot that's randomly chosen per like completed mission

which sometimes can take a while if you do a very long one uh and even with like there was one bug that they recognized you know while we were reviewing it but even with that kind of taking care of i was still having issues and that is is the worst i. That's when I actually quit. Yeah, that's when we lost Chester. We had done this mission that literally, I mean, no exaggeration. It was a multi-day mission. And no exaggeration took, I don't know, half hour, 45 minutes. And at the end of it, my game crashed to the desktop.

And I lost any reward I would have gotten from actually doing it. And I was like, well, I'm never playing this again. So yeah, until that point, I actually didn't even mind being new because I thought it was kind of fun to have plant tell us what we should be doing and then decide to not do that. Oh, that was, that was a blast. Just really let the body sit the floor and really get out there and strut my stuff. I feel like

Plant would not make for the best leader in that scenario. No, I was... He kept his cool. I kept my cool despite you saying, okay, let's make it loud. Five seconds. Yeah, I said that. So, when shit does get rough i feel like any uh disappointment

you might feel is totally ameliorated by the fact that the waves of police are timed to musical cues which is the fucking raddest thing like you'll hear the music like start to pick up and then just like fucking go crazy and right when it goes crazy is when the waves of police start coming it like it gets you genuinely hyphy yeah but but for me the shooting just kind of seems so so and not as clever as like i've i've played maybe 10 missions um and i've only completed a few of those and like none of them went smooth like every single one devolved into me shooting dozens and dozens and dozens of police officers a lot of the game right isn't it like um what was that heist game on xboa monaco monaco where it's sort

of like designed for that no i disagree well because in monaco you have this set of tools that is constant. Like the things that you can do is constant, whether you're sneaking. And then like if you get caught, you have to use those tools to like get away and survive. In Payday, you're explicitly not using those tools when you are or you're using a different set of tools when you're heisting and you're trying not to get caught. And then when shit go loud, it's like fucking shoot. You've got to kill everybody in the entire world. and you're trying not to get caught and then when shit go loud it's like fucking shoot like i you gotta kill everybody in the entire world and like i don't know it feels if to me it felt like a shooter with a a heist component sort of attached to it when like i would much much rather have a

game that is the reverse see i felt like it was the opposite like the best parts were designed to be the heist and that's why i think the shooting feels a little weak but the most exciting mission for me uh of the like shooting missions because there are definitely missions where you're just busted is one that's like a ripoff of breaking bad the you know like in breaking bad this is no spoiler because it happened so many times but where a van would get pulled over and the police would open the back and then guns would go blazing from inside the van and outside the van um no okay well it happens um but there's a there's a mission where you get pulled over by the fbi basically uh and they unload and you have to get out of a van and start moving your coke uh up into a warehouse yeah and working with four people

and basically having each of your backs facing away from each other and like covering all points while you're totally out in the open and then also moving these bags of coke at the same time with that crazy music cue that he's talking about was incredibly exciting and it felt more tense than like a traditional first person shooter co-op mission which is keep going forward and then wait behind cover is there is there ever a moment where so you you do the bank heist and then like someone hits the silent alarm and then there's like time at which you you've taken hostages and then can like interact with the cops in not a way that's like them storming the gates no but like can you like ask for them for things no but the police are careful around

hostages so it benefits you to basically get some in front of your shop and they will focus on breaking them loose and if you get arrested your time to basically get negotiated back into play is reduced if you have hostages. So you'll basically exchange. Is one of the missions breaking into a record or a radio station to get your demo played? With guns filled with hot sauce. Yes. Is that Airheads? Was that the movie Airheads? That is the movie airheads okay i was

trying to make sure sorry it's biodome okay is there a mission where you and one of the lesser popular baldwin brothers infiltrate like this scientific facility uh where they're trying to like recreate these different uh you know uh environmental biomes but like then you throw like a crazy party and the scientific safety is this in the army now you're describing in the army now and then no it's chairman of the board and then somehow you fix it and the science comes out legit even though there's this huge outlier where you threw a fucking party and people like peed in the tar pits. What was the name of that series? Was it Greasy Weasel?

It was Pauly Shore's War on Science. And Us. Hey, guys. I think it's halftime. It feels like halftime. Oh, boy. Can I say a thank you at the beginning of halftime? Yeah.

When I was walking back from, I had to pick up my stuff from the office the other night. And I was like walking home and I was on my phone. And I don't know who this person was. I hope they hear this podcast. The person pointed at me and yelled, I love you in a very passionate way. And I was shocked because I was on the phone. And then he said, besties. And I was like, thank you for listening.

And then he just, he sped off. Is it possible that he's a psychopath and then he just he sped off is it possible that he's a psychopath and that he doesn't listen to our podcast and he was saying that you and he are in fact best friends i wouldn't have minded that either you know if he had if he had nothing to do with me he had never heard anything uh that i've ever done uh but he just he just you know he loved me yeah And he wanted you to be best friends. Yeah. Guys, we're famous.

I guess that's true. Fresh Dick, you got recognized at the movies, right? At the movie theater. I was off to see Elysium, which was terrible. What a disappointment. I want to hear about that after this. Okay, we can talk about it. But we won't go into spoilers, but I'll talk. And, yeah, the uh who sold me the diet

coke um was like i know you and then we talked about briefly when you ordered your beverage you're like and i want a diet coke i did actually i actually order everything like that now just hoping someone will recognize you from uh yeah elysium uh not to go into spoilers but essentially it you know there are moments where it's very pretty there's a lot of pretty things to look at but it turns out foster it turns out that uh no bomb camp can actually write um dialogue because he's bad at it district nine so funny story he wrote the story for district nine but almost all of the dialogue in district nine was improvised by shartlow copley whatever his name is the lead guy um it was almost all improvised which sort of became very clear that this was obviously not improvised because

there's lines where like matt damon is like being spoken to by a little girl and she's like i'm gonna tell you an allegorical story about a hippo and a meerkat that will be important later on in the movie. She didn't really say that exactly, but it's, it's pretty heavy handed and I was pretty bored and it, it's a big bummer. And I feel like the summer apart from Pacific Rim,

which I really liked has been full of those pretty big bummers. Yeah. I liked Blue Jasmine, but it was sad. Oh which I really liked, has been full of those pretty big bummers. I liked Blue Jasmine, but it was sad. I sort of liked it. Yeah, that was pretty much my movie adventure. That's a great story. You asked me to tell it. No, I mean, I appreciate it.

I meant it. I wasn't being insincere. I'd like to talk about my game that I played. Speaking of things that are sort of sad, I did the review of Papers, Please. Papers, Please. I don't think that's how they say it.

Papers, Please. Papers, Please is a document checking game. It's a document game. It's a document game it's a document game basically where you play the guard at a uh this of this fictional you're a border agent in this fictional company uh called astrotska um which i'm probably mispronouncing but i don't care because it's not real uh it's obviously like sort of standing for the ussr in the early to mid 80s uh and basically the way the flow of the game is that people come to your checkpoint after waiting for a very long time and you see them at their at your

window uh and they pass over their documents and you review them for inaccuracies and to see if they have falsified something or make sure they have everything and make sure they're up to code. The rules change every day, so it's broken up into days. Your first day, you walk in, you look at... Is this first person? What is the perspective here?

God, the perspective is really kind of hard to quantify yeah so the top half of the screen is basically just a uh a wide view of your gate and the line of people and the guards that are are taking care of you and then it's sort of the top third and then the bottom two-thirds is on your left-hand side is a window with a picture of the person and a little desk. And then to the right is your actual desk that you can peruse the documents on. So they throw their documents through the window. You pick them up. You sort of lay them out.

And every day you have to check the rules to make sure they haven't changed. Everything is presented. There's no... The user interface is presented entirely through physical objects. So whenever you compare a rule to an inconsistency, you have to get out your rulebook, flip to the page that has the offended rule on it, and then link that to the inconsistency. It's not like you click the menu button.

What's a rule, for example? For example, like one day, everyone has to have a polio vaccination documentation. So they slide that across. You look at their documentation. You make sure that it's not expired. You make sure that the names match expired you make sure that the names match you make sure of all this

and if you find an inconsistency then you go into this inspect mode you click the rule that they're violating and the specific thing in their documentation and you are given the option to sort of clarify it further sometimes you can do a full body scan and see if they are carrying contraband,

that sort of thing. Or you can detain them outright, or you can just send them away. And you have this big stamp that you, a very authoritative red or green, that lets them through the border or not. So that's like sort of the central game game mechanic but what it does it's interesting is when it starts to push on that so you have a family and every day you tally up the number of evaluations you got right so you know if you sent the 10 people through that were supposed to go through and you sent five people away that were that should have gone away then you get x number of dollars for that and you use that money to feed your family and to house them and clothe them and pay for medicine when they're sick and that sort of thing um but if you miss too many you start getting penalized so when you hear stories from people who can promise you other things or are trying to give you a sob story you have to decide if it's worth it if it's something

that you are willing to do so it's like everything is a is a test like that to see if it's uh you know worthy of taking money out of your family's you know coffers because that's what every missed opportunity and every every day every day lasts like six minutes so you have a really tight um okay the timer is going you want to try and and and see as many people as you possibly can so like it's not just you can spend all the time you want going over people's papers and then sending them through or sending right you're also trying to push as many people through but to give you an example a guard visits you and tells you that he's the guy who handles detaining people and that he gets a

bonus for every person he detains and he offers you a kickback if you detain more people so for every two people you detain you get five credits something like that so you suddenly have a an impetus to detain someone who doesn't necessarily need to be detained okay um and it's and it's asking you to weigh those sorts of things and there are 20 different endings depending on the path you take and you can go back to any given day after you've completed it and pick up your story again there. I probably saw six or seven of the endings. I'm not sure there's a win scenario.

How many of them end with blue jeans? Like you get blue jeans? Very none. Very much none of them. You sure? You haven't played all of them. It's a really interesting game it's very somber um but with uh sort of a vein of hopefulness but it really does give you i talk

about this in my review it it turns you into a monster really i mean you you're doing some things that are really unethical all in the service of this government. I mean, people can have a completely legitimate reason for why they don't have these things, these papers that they're supposed to have. Rules change every day. So, you know, people show up and they don't know the rules and they have the wrong documents and you send them away. And it puts you into that mindset of, well, I have to do this.

This is my job. And not consider the ethics of it until you take that mindset of, well, I have to do this. This is my job. And not consider the ethics of it until you take a step back. So I don't really care for games that make me think and feel bad. So this doesn't sound like my kind of game. I don't like thinking. Clearly.

But I think that it's not, what I liked about it is it's sort of not it's not a preachy game i i don't think i mean it's not a the sort of thing where you discover all along you were supposed to be doing x it's very much a mirror uh that that shows you mean, if you try to be an all-around great guy who's sending everyone through, I mean, you literally won't make it two days. You'll lose your money, your family will die, and you will end the game. Because of your family. No blue jeans.

No blue jeans for you. No blue jeans. So you can't, and that means that you have to live in some sort of gray area. And that's a really interesting line to walk. But even without all that, I think just the core mechanic of going over documents and finding inconsistencies and, like, it's like a memory puzzle game at its best. It's just so rewarding to like somebody hands you four slips of paper with, you know, dozens of pieces of information and graphics on them that you have to peruse to make sure it's all up to code. And like you're just about to stamp it clear to send it back. And you notice like the one inconsistency that they try to sneak by you. And you're like, not today, motherfucker.

Like the handwriting is like not super clear. There's stuff like the weight. You have a scale and a sort of ruler that people stand in front of. So you notice that the weight that they put on their ID and their actual weight doesn't match. That sort of thing. Maybe they had a big breakfast. Well, that's when you do a full body scan. And you see all the poop.

Yeah, no. Well, that's when you do a full body scan. And you see all the poop. Yeah, no. You do see boobs and wieners, though, which is weird. You can turn that off if you want. I think that that basic mechanic is what makes it work because you do get that rush, like Griffin said, of like, oh, I got you. But that's also morally pretty questionable. Nah, also morally nah nah nah nah nah yeah no it's just it just

gets you psyched because you're so good at your job yeah right um and uh it's it's kind of funny there's some parts that are funny uh it's not it's not super sounds like there's laugh right there's one uh old man that tries to come through like every other day and his shit is like always wrong and he's like here i come i made it this time i mean the first day he has nothing the second day he has a passport that he clearly made himself and every time you send him away he's like it's okay you have a really hard job and you're doing so great bye wow man i love that guy oh um but uh yeah it's it's really really interesting and another great example of a game where i mean you don't have to kill people to and enjoy it and you're indirectly killing people oh that's you're

not pulling a trigger and it's well sometimes you can't and it's on steam guns shit it's, well, sometimes you can't. And it's on Steam. It's on Steam, and you can play it on Mac. Oh, my God. Fantastic. I like it. I'd like to see, I would love to see this shit on, it seems almost made for iPad, doesn't it? Like all of its, all of its. It does sound like it, yeah.

Is the screen large enough on an iPad for all the paperwork? I think so. Yeah, yeah. Should be. Yeah, and you could, like, dress up in a uniform and pretend that you're, like, the guy. Or you could connect it in Bluetooth to your iPhone and then have that be, like, one of the windows.

Wouldn't that be tight? That'd be tight. Tech future-y. Well, that was sort of a downer, but also kind of interesting, which offers a nice segue to my game. We were discussing earlier how iOS and mobile games have been sort of a tough space to live in for the last year or so because they've been inundated by city builders, free-to-play puzzle games like Candy Crush, and, like, sort of depressing.

I remember a couple weeks ago, Justin, you actually asked me for like a twitchy Super Hexagon-esque game and I didn't really have an answer for you because it had been so long since one of those had come out that I really liked. One has come out that I really like. The wait is over. The wait is over. This would be my

the best reason why there's still hope for mobile games. And it is Nightmare Tower. It is spelled K-N and then, you know, the rest of it, Nightmare Tower, like a knight. And essentially, you are...

Do they know that they spelled the name of the game wrong? Have you emailed them to be like, hey, there's... I hit them up on Twitter. They seem cool with it, but I don't know. They're probably just embarrassed. Yeah, I think probably. Is it also possible that it is the correct name and it's a mare that also happens to be a knight?

Like a young... There's no horses in this game. Hey, Russ, does this have anything to do with the game Nightmare Creatures? I don't know that game. Maybe. Does it have anything to do with Knight Rider? No, that's spelled differently. Does it have anything to do with Knight Rider? No, that's spelled differently. Does it have anything to do with Towerfall or actual towers, like the structures?

Yes, it has to do with the tower. One time I rode the Tower of Terror at Disney World and I got diarrhea. One time there was this guy in a hole and the guy was like, Give me money! Chris Plant, watch West Wing before you make any West Wing jokes. Wait, that's a West Wing story? I don't think that physics will let someone run

forever. Can we talk about that? Okay, well, that's good because you're not doing any running in this game. What? Well, talk about the fucking game so I can keep interrupting you. Okay. So, you're a knight and you've got a rocket. And the game starts with you come on now

I don't like it when anybody does it the game starts with you launching yourself from the bottom of the tower up using sort of a pinball timer mechanic and so you're zooming your way up this tower and you're floating you're flying

straight up and monsters are appearing below you and the idea is you are just tapping the screen to dash down slash a monster and that bounces you straight up again and you'll gain more speed every time you kill a monster um and the idea is to keep your momentum up um staying ahead of an oncoming wall of lava, which is arising below you. So what's cool about this is, first of all, it's not a free-to-play game. I think it's $3 for the Universal app. And why that's a good thing is because a lot of games like this

would essentially free-to-play the gameplay to death, which is to say, well, they charge you for upgrades and stuff like that in this you're earning money based on how far you go but also monsters will drop money and that money you can use to upgrade the damage that you do so monsters that originally took three hits now only take one uh you'll increase your speed you'll increase um these like potions that you can pick up and you're constantly getting higher and higher up the tower um eventually you'll increase um these like potions that you can pick up and you're constantly getting higher and higher up the tower um eventually you'll get to the top of the tower where there's

a boss i know a lot of a lot of the people on this podcast take issue with games like even um jetpack joyride because essentially uh you sort of have to like sink in a ton of time before you can be really good in this that time is really rewarding because you're constantly feeling more and more powerful until you get to this maximum point where you beat the final boss and then it unlocks a survival mode where you are literally trying to last forever using all the skills that you've unlocked throughout the game um does that make any sense at all you guys are very quiet it i'm just listening because i've played i got so so deeply into this game that it's tremendous i have done i did all the trophies in the regular mode i did all the trophies

in the survival mode i only stopped playing it because i literally just had nothing in the survival mode i only stopped playing it because i literally just had nothing yeah i had nothing left to do it was it was i would say deeply engrossing since polygon.com uh yeah i love it uh i think they did an amazing job not only with um just like the concept of the game which does feel unique sort of it sort of feels like a little bit punch questy in the sense that it's a game it's not like a casual mindless like people that play games would enjoy it um but they also have like this art style that's kind of like mad magazine e it's like very outlandish and there's just a lot of like enjoyment like a lot of satisfaction in every moment that you're playing. It reminds me of a...

It's similar to a game called Christmas Santa Flight. If you know that game. I'm not aware of it now. I play it every holiday season. And I very much enjoy it because there are X number of upgrades. And the more you play the the more you play the more you can earn and there is a limit so at the end of it you are done and you have unlocked everything and i find that very gratifying as a gameplay experience and i know that's pretty

rote i mean i know that that's not like that's kind of dopamine 101, but it works for me. Yeah, I mean, it is very obvious why you're getting, you know, that scaling up, why that's so enjoyable. But I like the fact that even when you've maxed it out and you bought everything, there's still something to do to keep you coming back in that survival mode. It did feel like an inverse of Ridiculous ridiculous fishing because it uses motion control for moving your guy around but the motion control is like super tight and accurate and uh you know it ends with that survival mode in ridiculous fishing as well with the maelstrom it's just damn damn good i i really it is one of the best uh mobile games probably my favorite mobile game of the year so far um and it's also on it's also on uya uh if you've got one of those and um strongly strongly recommend i would also recommend if you have an ipad i think it's more

enjoyable i've been playing on both the ipad and the iphone uh i think it's more enjoyable on the ipad because you have a better sense of like space and like accuracy and stuff but it's good on iphone too that's all i had to say about that who um listen i'm not going to be on next week's episode because i'm going to be in germany so why don't you guys give me this one and i'll just kind of coast on it for the next week. And then when I get back, it can be another fair fight. You know what's good about this podcast? What's that? It sort of brings to light a bunch of things that maybe we weren't aware of before.

Almost like it's a day dedicated to making certain things you thought were unimportant way more important. Like a big block of cheese day okay uh i'm going to declare rust we're not going to have a winner this week we're going to have one loser and it's rush rush day are you like just now watching west wing is this is it hey guys i got some i got some really great um i got some really i got some really great married with children goofs that I want to pass on to you guys. You went to the same place my head was going. Weird. He flushes.

It's really funny. Al Bundy, man. Flushes that toilet. Okay, end it. How about the end of this episode? Yeah, who won? Did anybody win? I feel like nobody could win.

I won. I don't even remember what you brought. Actually, I think Griffin won just because I'm really worried about him. I'm worried about him getting on that plane and him thinking, like... Right, like, if I don't get it, like, I'm going to have a hard time getting to sleep on the plane, and then I'm going to get to Germany, and I'm going to be grumpy. Yeah.

Well, good thing that Germany is such a happy place. You've never been. You can't... I happy place so you've never been you can't i have been you've never been in your life i went to leipzig it's true it means breakfast hi i'm rest breakfast uh thank you so much again for listening to our program if you want more video game stuff go to polygon.com or YouTube or something. Just type Polygon and hit return. See where it goes. We're here every Friday to bring you the latest and greatest, so we hope you'll join us again

next Friday for the Besties. Because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best things? ... ... ...... Petskis!