The Besties - The Besties 69 - Live-ish from New York!

Episode Date: August 23, 2013

You ask for more Grant. You get more Grant. That's how things work here with The Besties. We give the people what they want. But what's this? Zounds! It appears your wish was made on a cursed monkey's paw. You know not what you've done! You see, in exchange for Grant, Griffin McElroy has been expelled to the land of Germany. Though I must say, the curse could not have happened at a more helpful time, what with Gamescom. Any who, somehow Frushtick, Hoops, Grant and myself all happened to be in the New York office this week, so we decided to record the episode the old-fashioned way: sitting uncomfortably in four wheely chairs, waiting for the others to snap under the pressure of extended eye contact. 0:00 - Broadway! 3:10 - The best transition of a video game series from offensive to progressive (Saints Row 4) 16:00 - Best ghost and / or panther simulator (Splinter Cell: Blacklist) 27:30 - Halftime! 34:30 - Best XCOM game of the month (The Bureau: XCOM Declassified) 50:00 - Best free-to-play game ever (Plants vs. Zombies 2) 57:45 - 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!

two days of inspiration come on something out of nothing the need to express to communicate go wing take it i think it's rent are they saying take it anytime i'm helping you to get into just do the part where you say Pablo Neruda okay I do want to build a house in Santa Fe no I want my god can we please not please do it. Yeah, I'm sure it's still playing. My name is Justin 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 Christopher Plant, and I know the best thing of the week. I guess I'm replacing... I've never... I ain't editing this.

My name is Chris Grant, and I'm filling in for Griffin McElroy, who knows the best thing of the week, and I'm going to try and do him proud. My name is Russ Froschkin, and I know the best thing of the week, and I'm going to try and do him proud. My name is Russ Froschkin. I know the best game of the week. I wish you guys could see what we're doing right now. There's the four of us in sort of a cloverleaf pattern, staring each other down. Yep.

It's like a McGawken group. It is. If those guys would just get brave and get rid of the table. Issue one. We're also sitting in our cheap office chairs that have been jerry-rigged with mic bars that are in front of us like children's chairs, essentially. We could not stand up now if we wanted to without breaking all of the equipment. When we're done recording, we will need to raise our hands in the air and call for an adult

to come get us out of our podcast prison. Can you my milk excuse me can someone open my milk uh this is the besties where we're talking about the latest and greatest in uh tech movies uh design broadway theater broadway theater furniture politics uh today we're going to be drilling down on video games uh since i'm in a podcast prison i have no notes in front of me. I don't know what anyone's doing. So I'm going to start with someone on my right-hand side. And Christopher Thomas Plant, what's up? Well, Saints Row 4 is up.

Hell yes it is. I couldn't decide what part of this game I wanted to bring. And I think on the original note sheet, it was best superhero game. Well, I'm sure we'll talk about that. That's vague. But what I'd like to talk about is the transition of Saints Row from the ugliest franchise in video games

to this weird progressive franchise, maybe one of the most progressive AAA franchises. And they've done this by basically just keeping a lot of the things that were bad originally right like the porn stars and the gobs of sex uh and violence and instead of being really cynical and angry and hostile towards all those things they've embraced it with like loving care there's still a lot of sex but now it's like this pansexual you're joyful in it you know you you love the sex and you love sex with anyone and no one's mean about it and if someone says no you recognize respect you respect for his decision um and it

just found a way to maintain a lot of those base things that are so great without being a jerk. Yeah, I think one of the perfect examples of that is the streaking, which I think is still in Saints Row 4, but it was definitely in Saints Row 3. And the streaking minigame is essentially you take off all your clothes in the wardrobe shop, whatever, and then you run around naked. And a lot of games might do that with like i don't know ladies naked but in sans fro you like march down the street like you're in a parade and you're just super proud of it and

you like bump into people and you get bonus points for bumping into people while you're naked and it's just like happy it's like happy you're a puckish rogue they say that quite a bit in the game and it's totally true you're just like, lovable criminal that everyone just doesn't care that you're doing awful things because you're just like so thrilled about it. By being the id of this civilization, you are revered and elected president. So if you haven't played Saints Row before, some of the big things you need to know is now you have superpowers. You are in, I guess it's technically the same. I mean, you're still in Stillport, and I don't know if it's been, is it the same architecture?

It's more like the same. Yeah, they added some alien towers and stuff, but otherwise it's the same. Yeah. Originally started as a DLC called Enter the Dominatrix because there is a real undercurrent of Matrix and Mass Effect 2 parody to Saints Row 4. They didn't keep that name, though.

It's not good. Well, yeah, you can't really market a game on a retail. One of the dumbest jokes happens to be that original title. Yeah. But yeah, it's funny because there is a lot of Shakespeare in the game because the enemy in this game is an alien that has been, I guess, all along the world has been fake. And we've been living in it.

What? No, no, no. Were you paying attention when you were playing the game? The opening is very quick. You become the president. The world is destroyed entirely. Spoilers. Sorry for the first part.

I see the Shakespeare analogy. But yeah, I'm interested to hear you. Wait. And then the world's destroyed, and then you're put into a VR simulation of the world. And this alien quotes Othello quite a bit throughout. It's not just Othello, though. It's a lot of Othello.

And it's one of the radio stations. Did you hear me roll my eyes? Yeah. Was that audible? It's not just Othello. He also, actually, if you're listening to the classical radio station, did you hear me roll my eyes yeah is that audible uh it's not just othello he also uh if actually if you're listening to the classical radio station he who reads an entire chapter of pride and prejudice really yes i need an entire chapter doing all the voices and everything it's hilarious

uh that is so much what makes this game so awesome is that it's constantly doing things that like you know like another game might like read a line and be like oh, we're reading some Pride and Prejudice and stuff. Saints Row owns how outlandish it is and just sticks with it and goes on for another 15 minutes. Right. It always, it buys

into its own gag so hard. There's a great scene where your character is called upon to do a strip tease, which in another game, I think we played for goofy laughs because the hero would be sort of embarrassed into doing this. And instead what we get is him doing it with,

as far as I could tell, no actual plot provocation. It's just something he decides he needs to do in the moment. And, and it changed it like his, the, It's just something he decides he needs to do in the moment. And it changes the joy and the pride he takes in his performance that continues 15 minutes. He continues to talk about what a great moment it was for him and how his whole life had been leading up to that. And the way it buys into its own gags, I think really sells what could be kind of a puerile nature. Well, and the writing is above just these gags, right?

Like there are the really dopey, easy poop jokes in there. But one of the hardest laughs, I'm on microphone number two. But there is a joke that came out of nowhere where they call these characters who are their friends from Saints Row 3 and the person

doesn't answer because they're like, oh, it's a 713 number. Do you know anyone with a 713? And he's like, oh, I don't know. There are 12 people alive on Earth right now. Yeah, but they're not answering the phone because it's just a number they don't normally have in their phone book. And it's so stupid.

And it's like this really, really heightened moment, and the plot just stops on a dime to get this stupid joke about phones, and then keep moving. It's funny because I think what it manages to make fun of video games in like a very big way i mean it is it has gone beyond being the worst of video games to it like holds up a

mirror and forces you to confront like this is look upon your creation video games man it's like this and matt hazard exactly right like real high watermarks. Everything Matt Hazard aspired to be minus the Doogie Howser. It is pretty funny. I never made that connection, but it is sort of funny how many of the jokes are very similar to the jokes

that Matt Hazard was trying to do. And part of the reason... Matt Hazard, I guess, might have had a few decent things here and there, maybe. I didn't really play enough. Oh, really? But the gameplay was awful

so even if it was brilliantly written there was no way to get past it whereas saints row has amazing gameplay and really good writing here's the thing about saints row for me i didn't get fully into saints row 3 i got bored boo saints row 3 you're too law-abiding i think no it's just like i actually did an interview with them and they talked about how they recognized that the pacing and actual game structure of saints row 3 was really bad and that a lot of people lost the thread and they stopped doing stuff um and so that was one of the things i want to address in saintsware 4 but for me it just became like like almost like when you can do everything why do anything you know like well and that's that was the point that i realized too

i love saints Row 3. And I thought, personally, I thought it was paced really well because after every single mission, some new insane gameplay feature was introduced. In Saints Row 4, you're pretty damn powerful within the first half hour of the game. And that was sort of a shift, and it kind of took some of the encouragement and enthusiasm out of finishing missions.

Because while you would get new powers and stuff like that, they just really augment the powers you already had. And you didn't necessarily feel more powerful. It wasn't like getting a helicopter with rockets for the first time, which happened in Saints Row 3. And it was like an amazing moment. That is a weird shift also for Saints Row 4 is that they have – there are tons of vehicles. You can feel free to upgrade the vehicles to your heart's content, and there is no reason,

unless you are forced into a vehicle. The only time I would use a vehicle where I wasn't forced into it was, and this was pretty great, being mid-air, in mid-glide or mid-hover, and realizing, like, ah, I got quite a distance to go.

I'm going to instantly summon a plane to be in and and summoning a plane and flying over that way because it made it easier but anything else you would um you are actually going to lose because it is littered with i think over a thousand collectibles they said i mean so much stuff and you would miss most of it if you're if you're driving um and that's interesting that they put all this, I mean, there's vehicles. You can totally do that if you want. There's just no reason to do it.

I think that is what's interesting about this game using the same city, though, and basically the same everything from Saints Row 3 is. If you wanted to make this game, Saints Row 4 as it is, on its own, from the ground up, you couldn't. It would be so expensive because you had to build

all of that all the cars all the car mechanics all these things that people are not going to use but need to be on the ground while here it's like well we already have it right let's just build a whole new game on top of that so really it's two times the game it's two full developments just plastered into each other talk about a value i mean i would tell you it's a little bit comparable to like brotherhood assassin's creed brotherhood which built pretty much i mean obviously it was a new city but a lot of the mechanics were introduced into so almost all the like hardcore development work was done as just a matter of adding content making the game what's weird about santeria 4 when we had this conversation uh during lunch is what where do they go from here like you've right now

they've got you've got superpowers you can fly you can glide you're not invulnerable you can stomp the ground and make people hover in the air and set them on fire and um i don't know if you can put that genie back in the bottle i feel like the only thing that it's missing right now is having the sort of, like, space that a game, like, presumably based on what we've seen of GTA V or even San Andreas, those games, in addition to having, like, city environments, had, like, wide open spaces. And I think that could work to sort of augment what is generally... What?

You just said it. What? You were said it. What? You were right there. Didn't you get it? Didn't anybody else hear it? Space. That's where you go from here. Space.

There's tons of space. They did that at the end of Saints Row 3. I didn't finish it. Shit. It was a movie. Yeah. Oh, yeah. What if they went to space?

It's really funny. You should really play it. Oh, it's awesome. Saints Row 4 is tremendous. And Saints Row 3. Yeah, they're both great. And you know what? It started out as DLC,

but you are going to get a full gameplay experience. Don't let yourself get hung up on the fact that... Do I have to finish Saints Row 1 to get the story? You do, actually. Well, if you want to fully enjoy Saints Row 4, it does help to play all of them. Because, one, you actually do grow to like the characters a lot that's what I'm bummed about is they pretty much said this is the end of this Saints Row

cycle or whatever they're calling it I really like the characters that would be like if you said we're going to make a Fast and the Furious movie but you know we're getting rid of all of those lovable cars cars and hard bodies those abs I gotta get those rocks of all of those lovable cards. They also... And hard bodies. Lightning McQueen.

Those abs. I gotta get those rocks. They also make a lot of jokes about writing mistakes that they made in previous games where characters were really underwritten and or lame, and they bring that back and reference it throughout Saints Row 4. So there are...

I mean, whatever. You don't need to play them, but it is funny. For those who have stuck with the series, you will get a lot of nods. There is, for example, Keith David is in the game as Keith David, the vice president of the United States. But Keith David has also voiced a character in the Saints Row universe. And no one does not mention. Doesn't he remind you of it?

No. Don't tell him that. He's very sensitive. Yeah, don't bring it up. I just like that Shandi, who's basically your sidekick throughout the series, in the first game is a total stoner burnout who also gets naked all the time. There's a lot of nudity involving her.

And then after that, they completely change her character she's like the strong female kind of buttoned up woven tight uh and both characters are in the game so they're like well you know it's like the first one kind of sucked but at least she was fun like and there's basically making these two people learn to exist in the same space and respect each other. And then you, like, kind of like them both more for it. Right. So many crazy choices that they get away with. You should.

I don't want to talk anymore about it because I don't want to spoil any of the good stuff. There's a lot of magic. A lot of magic. Yeah. Chris Grant. Your name rhymes with Chris Plant. What have you... I look a lot less like Stanley Kubrick though

no Chris Plant looks exactly like Stanley Kubrick I'm going to find this right now Tony Hale meets Stanley Kubrick I've been playing I think I put it down as the best ghost and or panther based simulator on the market today. Trying to think of any,

have there, oh, Geist was a ghost simulator. So you're saying it's better than Geist. It had no panther element. It had a dog, which is almost like a panther. You could take over as the dog.

Yeah, but yeah, not a panther. Okay, fair enough. Continue. What you want is to either be a panther or a ghost in a game. There's only one game on the market.

Got it. For you. And that game is Ghost in Panther Man 7. What you want is to either be a panther or a ghost in a game. There's only one game on the market for you, and that game is Ghost in Panther Man 7. You can also get any of the other games. Six was terrible. Ghost in Panther Man. Did not like Six. Was it the tactical shooter? It was.

I can't remember. Splinter Cell Conviction. Not Conviction. It's bad. The Splinter Cell Blacklist, on the other hand, is the new game. And I've played probably about three hours of it, maybe a little more. And it's good. I'm going to discuss it in the context of previous Splinter Cell games.

Well, explain the Ghost Panther thing, because I think people might be confused. People are like, why is there a Ghost Panther? There's also a third type, but it isn't as exciting, called Assault. Boring. Come on. wiser ghost or pendant there's also a third type but it isn't exciting called assault boring um come on um so well i mean so that gets to the point though is in context of other splinter cell games it makes sense why they have all these different play types so the early splinter cell games kind of you know mostly typified by chaos theory really rewarded or not even rewarded

required um actual stealth yeah like they were punishing you couldn't get seen even if you got seen a little bit but still managed to get away like you're dead restart um so then they moved away from that a little bit with a double agent yeah double agent was awful they moved away from that a little bit and then with conviction they were like okay well double agent all right so now we're going to, we're going to make it an action game. We're going to action this series up

and really make it so you feel powerful. Conviction is very much about how do you kill these guys without them seeing you first. Yeah.

So they came up with all this stuff like mark and execute and et cetera, et cetera. Which was good. But it was an action game. Yeah. With some really

dubious design decisions. decisions punching women in the face what you punch the one of the first things you do is like break a woman's nose yeah remember this Sam Fisher doesn't see gender yeah it was really weird because she's like I think we're like really nice or something like Sam what's wrong break your nose that's what's wrong your nose. That's what's wrong. Your nose was there. That's why they replaced Michael Ironside. Yeah. He liked it too. So Conviction was a while ago.

And that was, is that still an Xbox 360 exclusive? No, I don't know. I don't want to think about Conviction anymore. Conviction's good. It's okay. This is a much better game, I would say. It's not great, but it's good it's okay i just this is a much better game i would say it's not great but it's it's good so in uh planning blacklist which has been quite a while in the works it's the first

game out of ubisoft toronto they meant to hold a new studio in toronto it's actually toronto's first i think major triple a studio um in order to own the splinter cell franchise and develop it this is their first game. So in some ways, you can think of it as a reboot of sorts. There's a new actor playing Sam Fisher. I don't approve of that. Hey, you don't have to approve of it. You just have to recognize that it's real

and it happened. The sooner we get over that, the better. Have the strength to change the things that... So this is also our AA meeting. I do. We're getting a circle. strength to change the things that so uh this is our this is also our aa meeting so um uh one of the ways that they address the sort of shortcomings of conviction um was that they decided to make it so you could play any way you want if you really want a stealth game and you want to do that you can you can play full stealth ghost mode you get ghost points for doing ghost

things um like ghost points like a flower yeah like putting a sheet pretty spooky move there's 10 ghost points to gryffindor this is basically beetlejuice the game you kids um so you get but basically yeah you get ghost ones like you get different points for doing different actions that fit a different play style and then there are different things that you can upgrade that match those same play styles so you can upgrade a lot of your gear that helps you get through a level without being spotted or if you just like to shoot dudes real hard you can upgrade your shooters shooters you can upgrade your got it so so what i don't understand based i've only played like an hour and a half so panther panther is like that's more like the conviction side i think where you're like stalking stealthy deadly okay but so so ghost is like they don't see you

okay you don't exist or probably non-violent as well non-lethal rather non-lethal is the level actually change like you picked this before no no it's based on how you're playing so and that's one of my criticisms so to be fair so i played the the intro which is pretty short i played a full mission and the missions are long yeah it's they're substantial um and i watched these uh knuckleheads play uh some co-op today um i have not played any of the spies versus mercs which is uh which was in chaos theory i think at first right uh no pandora tomorrow pandora tomorrow and that was very well received then so they've brought spies versus mercs back um but you know the thing about the thing that i'm not

sure about yet is if you play as ghost um i often feel like and they they fix it in a way in a design way but i feel like i'm going through levels that are they look like a shooter level there's a bunch of mid-level cover right like i feel like i'm going through a shooter environment but i'm doing it stealthily and if you manage to avoid people one of the ways that they reward you for that is you get points you're basically earning xp this whole time and um you get a certain amount of xp for killing somebody you get a certain amount for knocking somebody out but if you go completely undetected so you make it through a level and a lot of times games would indirectly encourage you to kill all the dudes to get ammo or to get points or to get whatever so in this game if you literally

go through an entire you know chunk of a level and don't get spotted once by the time you're sort of gated into the next part it'll pop with like a ton of points for being undetected cool so like they still reward you for that but sometimes i feel like i'm playing it that way because i want to because that's the reward not because the game is forcing me to because at any point i've got all this mid-level cover i've got an assault rifle but that's good right you shouldn't be forced that's something that you talked about with um it's a similar conversation that you and i had with uh uh a game recently where you you were bored with the way you're playing it mind sweeper yes what was that game what's the game bubble wobble well something good the last of us well

we'll edit all yeah last of us right so you were you were upset because it was boring and the way you were playing it and i said well like don't play it don't play it boring play it in a way that's fun to you and you're doing what you're built to play it boring but what you're describing is like they're not forcing me to do this i'm doing this because it's fun like get with it i'm saying i'm not doing this because i'm it's the it's the most reward the most reward oh you're doing it just from an economic standpoint in a way do you know that that's the most reward for sure so yeah with in terms of like xp that you're in yeah this is what i don't get is what do you get for ghosts you get a bunch

of ghost points what does that do for you ever a podcast announcement we can't keep saying ghost points like that's a thing in the world because we're what do these points do um no no they're not specific ghost ones you get xp okay for each action yeah the ghost xp is generous but if you're invest if you're making an investment in the gear with the money you earn you also earn money and you upgrade stuff if you make that investment you want to make that investment to one one play style okay so so it's basically just you're earning money. You're not earning points. Yeah, but you also get points for doing what you do. So wait, what's the difference

between the gear you can get with money and gear you can get with Panther points and spooky tokens? The spooky tokens you use exclusively to get new scares. Grabbed by the ghoulies. Is that what we're talking about? I mean, what happens?

Zectoplasm is more caustic than ever. Do you remember that scene in Batman where the guy goes where is it here? Like you can do that you can unlock here Press wide a where's fuck honey So I'm gonna connect goof you actually can you yeah, that's it to say hey you yeah, and then and then guys come and you can knock them out except for you have to say you can just press y or you could go hey you hey hey you hey you hey you it does not work actually it worked the other night when uh you know my girlfriend walked in and activated it just talking to me and screwed up the entire mission for me so it's very sensitive she said where are you as she normally does yeah i i was trying to do this

one mission i was like i'm just gonna press y from here because it's ridiculous um so i don't know like i'm i'm gonna try i did the whole first level as ghost, and then I went back and played part of that level, like the last checkpoint, as Assault to see how many dudes I could kill. I think I'm going to play different levels each way for fun. Couldn't that limit your upgradeability? Right? No. You're still getting money, though.

You're not going to get higher tier and that would be my my worry is that like that might limit you to seems like that would limit you to one play style when maybe you want to mix i don't think the tiers are the higher tiers are locked to like leveling up i mean i will say i mean arthur uh other geese our team did our review and you were in the review and i talked about that that if you're going to play as a style you're best served to invest in that okay that makes sense so for your suit like you pick the stealthy suit and pick the silenced weapons and stuff like don't spend your money on an awesome new gun that you're never going to use if you're playing ghost um so that's kind of where you know before why are you playing this way it's like well because the game wants you to play a certain way

and in this case it wants you to play as one of these styles. And it's not binary. It's like all ghosts. So my score at the end of that mission, it's broken down, was like 80% ghost and then 20% split between assault and panther based on I got spotted or I knocked somebody out. But yeah, it's... Is it fun? It's fun, yeah.

I wanted to talk about co-op because justin and me and plant and i sort of switched off playing co-op this morning and and i actually played co-op last night online and i found that split screen we were gonna yeah it didn't work out i'm sorry buddy it was justin's fault um it it's funny split screen is way harder than playing online because of the way they arrange the screens. The screen is split in half and so much of this game

is about visibility and knowing where the enemies are. Explain split in half. Vertically or horizontally. So the line is vertical. Yeah. So it's split down the middle. A lot of these games,

they'll do like... Hammer style. They'll do like... Very thin bands. Yeah, thin bands of like diagonal... But some high field of view yeah so it's still the letterbox format um this game no so you you're ended up you end with like

a very narrow frame of view and just like knowing where enemies are was like nearly impossible it's like being a puppy with a cone on your head right a really adorable one. Hey, speaking of puppies with cones in their head, you had an anecdote to talk to us for halftime, didn't you, Russ? I didn't, actually, but I did know someone who has been having a tough time, and I wanted to make sure that they took a minute. So I'm going to just step out. You look me in the eye when you do this.

Hello, besties and chris grant it's uh what's his name it is i jean baptiste okay good i couldn't tell because there were a lot of choices world renowned game designer jean baptiste hello i am am, I am, you speak French? I just got the ugliest look in the world. It said, do not step on my thing. Chris Plant, you speak French as well? Un peu. French-Canadian or French-French?

Canadian. There is a big difference. Besties, I wanted to say I am having not a good week this week I'm so sorry to hear that Jean-Baptiste whatever is the matter to a daze all day you oh yes your French is very good

it's very bien well civil you are you should know. So this week is Gamescom, yes? All right, you should be over there. Yes, I should be over there, yes.

This is what happened. I did not think that I needed a ticket for Gamescom. Because... You didn't think you... Well, you are, okay. Okay, wait. You're in New York now. Yes I was visiting

What was the plan to get into games come from New York? The Hyperloop's not finished. I heard that there was it was happening in Colin and I my colon is here. So I just visit Colin And my colon is here, so I just visit colon. Wait, okay. I don't want to disparage. I'm sorry. Just to clarify.

When you say colon, do you mean... There are many things it can mean. One, cologne, like a cologne that you wear. Okay, not that one. So two, your friend named Colin. No. Okay, and three, the organ, your colon. Yes, my colon. It's kept in a glass jar.

No. It's in my body. I carry it around. You thought, to put this in succinct terms for everybody, you thought that Gamescom, the development conference, was happening in your butt tubes. Is this what you're telling me? In colon. This is on all the press releases. It says games come

in colon. So I figure I have a new game. I will show it there. So what game did you go to your butt tubes to show and were disappointed? I was very disappointed to see there was no one there. I mean, after all the work to get in there're it's also surprising that they asked for your ticket

yeah i have i have been uh making a game for quite some time you said that you thought you said at the beginning of this that your problem was you didn't think you would need a ticket. So what you're telling me is the hurdle to your attendance of Gamescom was not the fact that you thought it was

happening inside of your body. It was that it was happening inside your body. And they requested a ticket upon entry. Papers, please. Papers, please, to climb in your own butthole. There are many voices that tell me things. It didn't happen to be a giraffe from out long ago.

I do not recall. They seem very gruff and stern and strict. Demanding tickets and IDs, multiple. What was the game you were going to show us? I have been making a game. It is on pieces of paper.

52 of them. Oh, okay. It's a card game yes you could call it that yes many card games you might know you can play with people yes

not just yourself I find often there are no people around me I find I come home and it is empty did you look in your butt i i hear the voices but they are not there i have tried to play with them so i have created wait a card game you can play wait for it with just you you just need you and you know no i mean i call me crazy yes but i will i'm gonna guess okay do you already have a name for it i do and it's solitaire no this is this is a good name so

do you have the rights to this no no i don't no my was play alone game card guard got it how does it work you pretty much match the numbers on the cards wait so you put all the twos on top of the twos and the threes on top of the threes and when you've matched all of them there's four of each and when you've matched all of them

you win you'll notice Chris has been eerily silent Chris Graham has been eerily silent heris graham's been eerily silent during this segment he's actually uh he's filling out russ's termination well he's out of the room because because this is very sad for us i am liking recall uh yes i i so sell your this my game you just email me at geocities that's it you just do it is a twitter and and you can um speak to me directly and buy my game i'm gonna try to get that i'm gonna get directly and buy my game. Does anybody have the adge ghost in his Twitter? I would try to get that.

I'm going to get an adge of fire. Anyway, my game is $52. $1 per card. You could buy just one card if you wanted. Wouldn't it be cheaper just to get $52 one-dollar bills, write the numbers on those bills, and just use the bills? No, I have my artwork on each. It is original artwork.

You could sell it on the street. What does it look like? It's mostly animals. Cats and such. Jean-Baptiste, can you go get Russ so we can finish the podcast? Okay. Thanks so much for stopping by, by the way. Goodbye.

Good luck with your butthole. Adios, cities. Hey, guys, sorry to derail. I just wanted to make sure he had a minute. He's been having a tough time. No problem. The saddest thing is on his way out, a ticket actually dropped out of his pants. He had one. He had one all over.

Oh, the irony. I want to talk about the best XCOM game of the month. Oh, no. Oh, great. Wait, did XCOM come out on iOS this month? It did not. The best XCOM game of the month oh no oh great uh wait did did x-com come out on ios this one uh it did not the best x-com game of the week you just pulled an audible you pulled i thought you're gonna bring something else well i'd forgotten that we had uh we hadn't talked about it because the embargo just lifted and the game just came out this week of course it's x-com

sorry the bureau x-com declassified now when you say bureau do you mean the piece of furniture or do you mean i mean the the bureau okay so here's the weird thing about the bureau as an idea it's just x-com so i don't there is not a separate there isn't a bureau and x-com it's just x-com should i should i like fill in gaps like as you describe things are weird i'll explain the logic what is the bureau a reference to so also on our site as we posted a story that explains the long who wrote i did that that's right oh it was me um so the bureau in an early version of this idea, the very earliest idea was, what would have happened if aliens actually lived in the 50s,

where we barely understand computers, we're entirely unequipped for an alien landing, what do we do? Shoot them a bunch. Shoot them. No, we take photographs of them, and then we run away, and we use our research. And people wonder why that version of the game didn't happen.

That sounds fantastic. It sounds like Pokemon Snap. It sounds like the coolest idea that would be so difficult to get to work. Right. Okay, but in one version of this, it was basically the FBI, and XCOM evolved from it. So it was birthed from it, where it's like, oh, we are the FBI and XCOM evolved from it so it was birthed from it where it's like oh we are the FBI but we're

the FBI was designed to deal with other things you know I think it was like the team that was taking care of Russia at the time because it was the Cold War and they're like well the real alien threat you like that the actual aliens so XCOM declassified the so XCOM to classify the Bureau classified can we

just call it worse XCOM in the bureau you are agent Carter who is just from Mars the pits I mean he's an unlikable human with a crappy backstory and everything you says sounds like this Batman even when it's like hey let's go to the market later and get some heirloom tomatoes like everything is delivered so he is a lapsed agent who is brought into x-com just to help stop an alien threat what do you mean he's lapsed like he's been in retirement? Because he had a, he's been out of the field.

Okay. So he's been a desk jockey. Is he in a cabin growing a beard? Oh, I see. For a while because of some tragedy that has completely unrelated to aliens. Maybe something like this. You just don't know when to stop.

No. You push things too far. It wasn't your fault. Your partner got lost. He had some personal tragedy that they pretend is relevant to the story and isn't. So Carter is drawn into XCOM. Which is, so he has a team of two people that he brings with him on every assignment. Buddies.

Buddies, backup. And you give them, in the field you give them orders you can stop time by pressing b or actually slow down time every somebody and you can issue orders to them uh like move orders and deployment of like a laser turret for example or uh you can use powers like lifting the enemy up and uh mind control it's mass effect right, right? I mean, it's Mass Effect. And that part is actually pretty good. I mean, it's fun to throw up a turret and blast a bunch of dudes. Yeah!

Turret. It is not handled how that is happening. But yeah. And you can do airstrikes indoors, which, I don't know, science, I guess, is the explanation for that. Man, you put that bureau money behind it. I guess, right?

And all of it. So the weird part about this is that, I mean, that's the entire thing. There's no game above that or underneath it. I mean, that is the entire game part of the game. You have these XCOM elements elements like uh permadeath for example but you are playing a central character that can't die or you lose so there have to be these frequent checkpoints so if you don't like what happens in a fight and one of your agents dies then you just start the checkpoint again, and that's on every difficulty.

So they built a system to kind of repeat the permadeath that was in XCOM Enemy Unknown, and people really liked it. But then they pulled back from that same system because they wanted you to have a... It's not even a pulling back. It's that there are two gameplay elements that don't... That literally compete with each other. gameplay elements that don't that literally compete with each other that don't yeah they don't mesh together i mean they're just it's just in there

because it's x-com and there's permanent x-com i mean that's they wanted a bullet and that was another late mid decision where it was a really creative game originally and then it gradually got pulled in the very opposite direction until it was a hallway that you shot people in. And then with what time they had left, they had to make more XCOM to it. They had to make it more than just a generic shooter. Unfortunately, you crafted a shooter, so you have to be loyal to the core. The story is absolutely insane.

In the last two hours, it gets absolutely baffling. the last two hours it gets absolutely baffling and the explanation for why why we are still caught off guard when the aliens attack us in x-com enemy unknown is so hysterically bad and like because this is a crazy prequel it takes place before it takes place in 1962 they lost they lose all the paper there's no, it isn't a spoiler to say. Wait, is it the same timeline? Yes. It is, definitely. Here's the crazy part, okay?

Yeah. Close yours if you don't want to hear it. It's not, yeah, close yours if you don't want to hear it for 20 seconds because it's not even a spoiler. They cover it up. Oh my God. This shit tore apart the nation. People are in hospital beds. People are in slates. People are in slaves.

Entire neighborhoods covered with aliens. Covered with aliens. These bodies are littering the ground. Did you say bodies? That's redacted. No, exactly. And there were people that got... Close yours again, but this is too funny.

There are these people called sleepwalkers that are basically uh locked in the last thing they were doing when like their minds were taken by the aliens right sure which is it makes for creepy like set pieces in level people are like sweeping up yeah right or like trying to start their car and they're basically brain dead when you when you finish the game and defeat the aliens oh no they all wake up they all wake up and they're like hey and then in the very next scene you hear someone say and if there were some that remembered these sleepwalkers we had to terminate like they had to kill everyone not only that they didn't even remember because their brains were taken for that whole time so they just woke up and like oh i'll sell my car now utterly insane the game is

is the tactical action when you're actually playing it is not is not bad it's kind of interesting but there's no like elements that could have been worked from x-com like for example the idea of research and upgrading weapons and systems like that are completely non-existent the way we repurpose alien technology is we pick it up off the ground we shoot people i feel like they could have made enemy unknown and instead of a strategy format they could have just made it a shooter with everything else the same like yeah well i mean the problem again the problem is they had to keep whatever was whatever existed six months before it right yeah in theory yeah if they knew it was the one that was in development before enemy yeah exactly and it's like if they had started development

the week enemy unknown came out like who knows what type of game it would have been if you want to make a shooter that is inspired by that it probably would have been a very good game the problem is it's hard to reset everything financially. No publisher wants to hear, we're going to get rid of everything. And on the Sleepwalker note, one of the ideas that they had might be an origin that I honestly don't know. But for a while, when they were switching to the shooter, like traditional shooter mode,

it was going to be like an invasion of the body snatchers, which is another great idea where you basically couldn't act up. It's like we started to do weird things, kind of like Inception. You would give you away and then they would turn. Spy party. Which is yeah, but again I felt that I mean we saw this a little bit in the comments where people hear ideas like that like why didn't they make that and it's like we had every idea can be amazing.

The problem is actually making that. Sure. Like, who knows? Yeah. One of its, I mean. It's the great thing about writing about games that never get made

is that they're flawless. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, they're all perfect. Yeah, exactly. Well, there was that Boys of Silence thing from Bioshock Infinite

where the Boys of Silence originally would have been amazing where they'd, like, suck up sound that you make and then, like, play it back at you and stuff like that. And in Bioshock Infinite, it ended up just being

they were like turrets that spotted you and an alarm went off. Man, it's like the Boys of Summer thing that they were going to put into it. It's a DLC with John Cougar. And it is not an unpleasant experience. I think people are probably more butthurt about it because it is an XCOM game and that now carries with it more weight, I think people are probably more butthurt about it because it is an XCOM game and that now carries with it more weight, I think, than it even would have been before XCOM Enemy Unknown sort of revitalized interest in this.

I will say that if this had been, if they had called this XCOM, and of course they were going to call it XCOM before, long before the idea of this game sort of solidified. So this wouldn't have happened. But if this had been released and called XCOM, people would have burned Earth down. It would have been cast off. Do you think the name change has a lot to do with protecting the integrity of the XCOM brand? From what I've heard from a number of people, it's the opposite. And they don't understand it. From what I've heard from a number of people, it's the opposite.

And they don't understand it. 2K was basically like, we really want to align this with XCOM now. We're going to make sure that it's connected story-wise. We're adding in the sectoids. This is an XCOM game, and we've got the perfect title. The Bureau, okay, got it. XCOM, oh, it's in there. Declassified and I honestly think

they I don't think they're trying to protect it I think this is just a really bizarre decision I don't understand it this will be like the command and conquer renegade of the what's that was called the third person shooter weird third person

shooter like almost had a number of these like there had been first person or third person shooters in development for this series before fallout tactics of this yeah yeah they put you know despite any perceived damage that the bureau has done to the XCOM IP or franchise, yesterday they announced XCOM Enemy Within, which, as I was saying before, took me about half an hour of confusion to realize that that's in fact a different title than Enemy Unknown.

And it's an expansion pack for the original, so it's like they're going full steam ahead, and I think there's a lot of excitement about that. I just hope they do the underwater stuff from what that was the third game i don't know anything from the deep or whatever all right it has that awesome box art i'm sure this will have probably you're fighting humans or something but i like it's funny that like the game that ended up working out so well was the game that is so incredibly true to the original like just the core of it is almost unchanged but that's almost not not a fair i mean that's almost

not a fair i mean you're right but that's not actually that surprising if you think about that phraxis did it executed very well but they were also building on tenants that had been proven and established in this sure but and let's also not forget it was modernized it, exactly. Sure, I'm not saying it wasn't work, but the skeleton was there. The skeleton was there. It failed twice before they actually got the prototype that worked, and it was in one studio. So compared to what Marin and Australia

were going up against, I think the biggest bummer of it is not what will it do to the XCOM brand, because it won't do anything to the XCOM brand, is that Marin, the Bureau brand. The Bureau brand's gone. Marin was built to be an amazing studio. The amount of talent that got brought in, it was just like,

okay, let's just make sure everyone can work together and finish up Bioshock 2. But then we're going to have this amazing game. And it's like, no. There are still some pretty amazing people there talent-wise, but also the people who've left is jordan thomas all of the fulbright company yep uh we did gone home i mean there's a lot of i think it's really there's some kind of poeticism to the gone home coming out at the same exact time as the bureau yeah like it's they left and got a game out the door that got great reviews and is being heralded as

like you know a sort of you know if not without being too hyperbolic about a high watermark but something that's truly innovative and important in games at the same time as the Bureau and I think you could also compare it against Bioshock Infinite which some of them worked for it too

or worked on it's not as extreme but I think it's more of a direct comparison i i um a lot of times i i was tempted when i was first playing through it to compare it to assassin's creed which is to say like oh you guys have a really cool start here i hope that you can expand on it but i actually think with the bureau after finishing it it's the things that work about it are so derivative i don't think it makes sense to try to build off of it i mean they could build something but it's going to be absolutely rote and it's hindered by a friend like they would never use

this franchise again because people associate this franchise with mediocrity yeah the bureau the bureau yeah i think and the bummer is i don't think, I can't imagine that people in Marin want to develop another XCOM game like that. I don't think they'll give it to Australia. I don't know who 2K would even hand it to. I think 2K, theoretically, would be a little bit smarter about what they stick this XCOM brand on

because they do have a legitimate success with XCOM Enemy Unknown, and they don't want to do this sort of thing again. That original trailer, that first two trailers, I mean, it's for a game that didn't really exist. Alas, alack. Russ, fresh take. I'm going to wrap it up.

I'm going to end it. Hit me, I'm ready. Best free-to-play game I think I've ever played. Maybe? Wow. Maybe? There are some big asterisks certainly certainly um i don't think there are certainly this year i would say best three to play game i've played what about everquest shut up justin uh and the game is plans for zombies 2 um what everyone couldn't see is

he paused and then like arched his back and then started rolling his fingers and was like and then like waited as if we were gonna jump him I think it's a great game I think it's a great free to play game here's the main reason why

I'm not sure where to give them my money so that's sort of the funny thing I think a lot of people when they heard it seems more just like a free game yeah plans versus zombies 2 was going to be a free-to-play game made by ea i think everyone was terrified everyone loves the first game but so much of the first game is about like learning strategy and like a really smart way that the gameplay ramped up and like it was just very thoughtful, and by throwing free-to-play mechanics on it and you could, like, pay $5 to unlock every plant,

it would destroy the thoughtfulness of the structure of the first game. They went a completely different way here, where you basically have to spend no money whatsoever because you're constantly given new challenges, new plans to unlock, new stuff that like... It's like every level you beat, you get stuff. Right.

So you don't ever feel like, man, I wish I got stuff faster. I've put in easily 10 hours. And the only incentive, the only reason in my brain I'm like, I should be spending money is because I realize human beings made this game and i want to pay their salaries i played about two hours and the only incentive i have for paying the money because i honestly don't even know what the money is they don't pop it in front of you they don't kind of be over it it's just that i feel bad yeah i feel bad about getting two hours of entertainment for zero bucks so here's here's the thing though about this okay so i this happened with multiple publicists.

Usually when I'm, like, I have to make a phone call, and you have to do all, like, the niceties, right? Like, oh, hey, how you doing? What game are you playing? And every single person was like, oh, I'm playing Plants vs. Zombies 2. And I'm like, how's it coming? And every time, oh, man, it's great,

but I've already dropped, like, 16 bucks. Really? And it's consistent. It is. Where? I don't know where. And my question is like, is this a PR thing? So the only thing that I can think of.

Is this a certain type of person? The only thing I can think is that someone played the game for literally 10 minutes and was like, oh, I want to unlock all these plants, but they're all gated by money. I guess I got to buy them. When you play for 20 minutes you see oh i regularly unlock new plants all the time and there's only like five plants you have to buy with real money that's the only thing i can think of because no part of this game it doesn't feel grindy i don't at all i don't feel like i'm going through levels that are rewarding me at a slower pace than the first

game sure because oh well if you want to you know unlock faster you gotta pay for nope like you're going at a clip yeah you're getting stuff at a clip and so that's a really weird choice and it's like even if even if they did that even if they let you unlock stuff regularly i would expect after each level to maybe have a pop-up that says like hey give us your money right they are so polite it's like it's like you're staying at a friend's house and they made you dinner and they bought new sheets for the guest room you're staying on and like there's breakfast in the morning waiting and you're like this is weird like i would have just gone to a hotel i'm fine paying yeah it's like gasketball uh which was a game that came out uh

and it was free to play but you could like buy a chunk of the game inside the game and the game just downloaded tons like a hundred thousand downloads game inside the game and the game just downloaded tons like 100 000 downloads for an indie game and it made no money because there was it was not at all surfaced in the game that hey you should spend money do you i i wonder if this is the theory though when they were trying to figure out how the payment would work right so they they said people who know the vocabulary of games are going to be the people who hate free-to-play, or free-to-play the most, the people who don't want to pay for it, basically.

Okay, sure, sure. And they're going to start the game, and they know this language, and they'll be able to read it, and they'll see, like, oh, I'm getting stuff, and this is how a game works, and if I keep doing this, I'll keep getting stuff. Yep.

But the people who only play these sorts of games don't understand that vocabulary, and they're not going to learn it while playing this, so they'll be getting stuff, but they'll still'll still think well i wonder how long this will last and they'll just instinctively buy it's almost like um i'm trying to think of the term where in kids movies right a certain kind of writing where you write a joke that's it's two jokes yeah you know and like there's one audience that's right one for adults like in a pixar movie it like works on multiple different roles or like you know the the the the frequency they play

outside of convenience stores that scares kids away that's horrifying they play a frequency that young people's ears can hear and it's horrible and it's really uncomfortable yeah but if you're over the age of like 20 you can't even hear it yeah um or if you're deaf or yeah um i completely agree i think i think the trojan horse plan for this game the way they're going to make money and this is a way that i would absolutely 100 spend money is right now they have 16 million downloads in the first whatever five days um i think just charge people no i think all they need to do and they've already announced that they're working on the next content pack which is near future i believe charge me three dollars for the

for the five dollars for the next content i easily gladly pay the angry birds model yeah the angry birds they give you a little bit of free they bring you in and they give you something you can pay for exactly and essentially by making it free and giving you a ton of content you build this amazingly huge audience also yeah here's the thing if well i it free and giving you a ton of content, you build this amazingly huge audience. Also, here's the thing. Well, I don't really care about a lot of EA properties, but if there was cross EA stuff on there. Oh, like a Dead Space level? Or, yeah, a Mirror's Edge thing.

Or like an army of two level guys? Oh. Whatever. But if there was dumb stuff like that that I could pay 99 cents to throw that on some of my plants, I would probably. We were talking about that yesterday. I would absolutely pay money for cosmetic DLC. Yeah. In Plants vs. Zombies?

Yeah. Why? Anything like that. Just to give them money. It's a tip mechanism. Yeah, but I would give them money and at least buy a plant that I might use. But I'm saying if they don't want to change any gameplay and just make it cosmetic. So every once in a while a zombie looks like Isaac Clarke from Dead Space?

Yeah. And that's the brilliance of cosmetic stuff, right? It doesn't take a whole lot of development energy. Sure. But the price that you're paying for it is a lot. What do you think? Like 99 cents for an art slot? Wouldn't you rather pay for levels, though?

Sure. But I'm saying if they don't want to monet I'm saying I don't think there's as much interest in paying for levels, like, because it's, they're not... There's only tons of levels. No, I have interest in paying for levels. What's the difference from one level to the next? Because they have different themes and different zombie types, and each level

comes with, like, five new plants. What if one of the levels is Dead Space Team? Oh my god, that's good. Mass Effect, the theme. Dead Space Team? Oh, my God. That's good. Mass Effect the Team. And what if there's, like... But the ending stinks. And what if there's, like, the sound is like you're in space when you shoot stuff because it's a space game?

Okay. See, I would pay for that, maybe. If I could skin it. Let's see. That is a bad thing. It's like, yeah, you keep trying to get, like, really dynamic EA properties. And this is where having, safe properties bites in the ass. Guys, Star Wars.

They have the Star Wars license. Yeah. Oh, my God. No, they don't. Not on mobile. Not on mobile. Oh, snap. What about Kingdoms of Amalur?

Truly the reckoning. There's probably an EA franchise I would care enough about. Mirror's Edge. Yeah. What? All the plants are just white? Battlefield. That's racist. You're not talking about the skin color.

You're talking about the buildings, right? The environment, yes. Okay, there we go. I just wanted to make sure. I wasn't talking about skin color. Racist. Clearly, because the hero of Mirror's Edge is not white. Okay, that's fine.

I'm going to make sure. Duh. But fill it with cars and try to guess if it's need for speed or burnout. So which one of us is going to win this week? I feel pretty good. I don't even remember what yours was. Guys, my game is three games in one. My game is two games in one.

So three is better than two. That's just science. What was plants? Saints are for Chris Gray. I'll give plant. I think I went for Plant, too. Thanks. But guys, did I tell you about the part where mine actually has three separate games?

Interloper! Your time is done. Oh, we should mention, we're probably going to take next week off, because me and Plant are going to be out. And there's no besties without you two. No, definitely not. I think you're all going to be out. It's a vacation week, anyway.

No one's going to want to listen to the podcast. Who's taking vacation next week? I am. Are you supposed to work a half day today? I had that on my calendar. No, it's tomorrow. Wow. Uh-oh.

Half day. Guys, why is old Chris here the one who's not taking vacation nowadays? You should take a vacation. It's a good idea. Paint your floor. Do something fun. I do that on the weekends. That's what I use my weekend time for.

Thank you so much for joining us on the besties we hope you've had as much fun as we pretended to uh make sure you join us again uh next friday to listen to the show again and uh visit us on polygon.com we've got lots of great stories and features gamescom coverage uh exploding there that you can check out there's a stream which we use ongon to collect a bunch of stories for you and update that continuously. So just do a bookmark on it. Check in repeatedly.

There's a Saints Road Today I played. Yeah, you can watch that. Sorry, I don't want to interrupt. I just got a memo handed to me by Jim Bankoff, CEO of Vox Media. He wants to personally apologize to listeners of the besties for Jean-Baptiste. He's been flagged

at the front for security we don't know how he got in uh but he has it's it's an order to be shot on site so happy to have jim bank off with us and uh most of all we're happy to have you with you make sure to join us again next friday for the besties because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best. Besties! Besties. How do we tell them we're done? Just keep it rolling.

I want to make sure it doesn't fuck up. How do I leave? How do I leave this chair of contraption? This is the besties. I don't think anyone was listening. This is the besties. Damn fine. It's the besties. Da la la. It stopped, right? I don't want to fucking take any chances.

What about like a computer hacker? Yeah, there's a lot of buttons. Look, I'll tell you. For something that just records some audio, that's awfully complex. Don't touch it. Don't touch it. Just get someone who knows. Get an adult. ride or die roller coaster