The Besties - The Besties 70 - The avuncular episode

Episode Date: September 6, 2013

Frushtick is an uncle! Yes, the man of a thousand roles has a new one: the grown-up responsible for introducing a child to video games. Congratulations to Russ and the Frushtick clan. We return after a holiday hiatus to discuss everything from a life-affirming platformer to a bowel-purging horror simulator. We apologize upfront for any and all bathroom humor. How did you spend your final days of summer? What did you eat? I ate southern fried food for five consecutive days and my internal organs are now at war with one another. Whoever wins, I lose! 3:23 - Best dose of untarnished joy (the music levels in Rayman Legends) 12:40 - Best virtual colonic (Outlast) 21:24 - Halftime! 26:22 - Best Gauntlet reboot (Hammerwatch) 31:12 - Best tie-in surprise (Splinter Cell: Spider-Bot) 38:15 - The winner is... Theme song by Ian Dorsch Get the show: Download MP3" Subscribe to the podcast (RSS) Subscribe on iTunes Get the full list of games (and other stuff) discussed at www.besties.fan. Want more episodes? Join us at patreon.com/thebesties for three bonus episodes each month!

I always made fun of Griffin and Justin for growing up in West Virginia. I don't think I realized that level of difference between rural West Virginia, you know, West Virginia, and then like straight up middle of nowhere rural. You weren't in West Virginia, were you? No, I was in South Dakota, but... So still no actual frame of reference. Yeah. For all intents and purposes, there were farms and trees and not a whole lot else.

You know that, like, Justin and I didn't have, like, any... Justin and I aren't, like, fucking full-blown bumpkins. No, I know that. To this day, I don't know what tractors actually do. I just assume that they were, like, very inefficient means for farmers to, like, tool around their plots. They're really fun. Yeah, they're really fun yeah right do they till are they tilling machines do they sort do they sort things or do is it a harvesting

i think that's a combine sorts things anyway i was in the middle of nowhere in south dakota um i had a lovely time uh except for the fact that every single day on my vacation at 7 a.m., the following thing happened. Times a billion in terms of loudness for about five minutes every morning at 7 a.m. Cal's trying to fuck? The town, the local town, has an alarm to wake everyone up. That's awesome. And it sounds like there's a bomb going

off every day at 7 a.m fucking cool does it says everybody like do like a zombie like shuffle to like the central church well no because everyone's sleeping because no one gets up at fucking 7 7 a.m you're crazy do they perform rituals to some sort of pagan potato god? Hmm. I think they have corn out there, actually. 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 Thomas Plant, and I know the best thing this week. My name is Russ Frushtick, and I know the best thing of the week. Wow.

It was like a mini vacation for my ears. This is what happens when I go on vacation is that I just get a little reboot. And then over time, the tension builds and builds and builds. Your action winds down. That's exactly what happens. This is the besties where we take the latest and greatest in tech, sports, games, music, dance, fishing, outdoor sports dance fishing dance fishing and all of it

in uh and tell you what the best things that week are this week we're going to focus on uh video games and i'd like to talk did you say video games video games these games been videoed come a long way since pac-man i uh i want to talk to christopher thomas plant first oh hello what would you like to talk about uh i don't know i don't have the email open okay well do you want to talk about? I'd like to talk about my best thing of the week, which is. Now, come on. You got the best,

what? Like best. It's, this is the best shot of joy directly into your heart through a hypodermic needle. Yeah. And that comes from the music levels in Raymond legends. And really,

I think Raymond legends itself is itself is is how are you sorry how are you saying the general the armless armless gentleman's name raymond raymond yeah he says it like it's a last name it's very strange raymond everybody loves raymond everyone loves raymond it's the first um first time stamp it stamp plant the flag in that joke here on the besties podcast first time um so fair it was funnier because the way he said it so like if no one had made it before this moment they should have waited for now and they haven't that's why that's why i pointed it out and said we were planting a flag in that joke it's because we need to get all four of us need to head to the patent office together with our recordings and just like get get proof of first concept we can mail

ourselves a letter yeah i don't think that holds up in court actually anyway go ahead tell us about these music levels raymond legends is the sequel to raymond origins they're both 2d platformers they look like concept art that you can kind of bounce around in from you know one to the screen to the next uh what's special about these music levels is everything is happening in time with classical music. And I think there's also like a level to a Queen song. Yeah, I'm going to go ahead and stop you right there. There's actually only one level that has classical music in it. The rest is like pop music like Eye of the Tiger and what's that song?

Woo-hoo, woo-hoo, that one. So they're all like, I mean, they're instrumental versions of pop songs, essentially. Thank you. I would call Eye of the Tiger classical at this point. I think it's been picked up by the classical rock. And same with the classic song Woohoo, Woohoo. From Kill Bill and all the car commercials. There you go.

Yeah. And it feels like a mashup of a traditional platformer and a rhythm game and an endless runner. And it also, they have such a good sense of humor, the people who make these Rayman games. It's a very European humor. They enjoy a good fart. A block of cheese.

God, you just said the word fart, and Justin and I, i like you got us that's all it takes that's europe man um and look at this funny rabbit going blah yeah that was the initial pitch for raymond raving rabbits actually um billion dollar idea uh but yeah that that that's basically it it's it's just a very simple joyful thing that the more you talk about it i think the more you take the magic out of it so i'm gonna i'm gonna talk about it some more then great um so essentially suck that magic out what plant is talking about is see if you can imagine this guys try to picture this in your mind got it it's a

platformer that has rhythm music elements to it oh this is great you're gonna say what i just said all over again perfect sure but i'm gonna acknowledge the fact that this has already been done before in a game called bitch rip runner okay so well that was yeah except for they're nothing alike uh but this is a great point that you've already once on a different thing that we are about to it hasn't aired yet so i guess i shouldn't make the point is we're gonna have a dumb point on two things it's a totally valid point but go to hell fresh dick can you pin an opinion piece for us to run alongside this like i'd be really happy to publish a triangle of dumb shit that you're see bit trip runner is like playing

a piece of music because you're just learning signals and then you react to them by pressing buttons that's not true yes it is no as the person who reviewed it i can tell you that there are different signals on each level and then you press the button to react to them and it's the same every time here there's room for flourish and that's what it's about it's about the art yeah that ubi art framework man that's no joke i can't wait for that that child of light game that's gonna be dope once they start what is that the rayman games are sweet right um i don't know child of light was child of light so thanks for reading all my gdc europe coverage i'm glad that i flew fucking 38 hours for nothing child of light oh jesus child of light is uh an indie game that is being produced at ubisoft with like a team of

40 people uh that utilizes the ub art framework to create uh basically a japanese inspired role playing game wow oh well i was super interested until the the end of that conversation well no it's it's a sick idea because like uh the idea is to to take like who's the guy who did Amano who did the Final Fantasy six, like all of the amazing Final Fantasy concept art. And then you play the game and it's like the pixelated version isn't even like close to to what they realize. Like Final Fantasy six was huge, huge with that. The idea is like they can take that concept art and using the UB art framework, like, make the game actually look like that shit. Yeah. I mean, that was the disappointing thing. Well, it's funny that you say it's an indie game, because

that was originally Rayman Origins, too. When they first started that, it was, like, a team of, what, like, five or six people? And it was going to be a downloadable thing, and it became this whole... It became much bigger. Let me ask you this. What platform are you playing on? I'm playing it on Vita as a fresh dick

yep that's in vita in that like this kind of shittier vert like some shit missing it's missing the five person multiplayer that's on the wii u and it's missing uh what else oh the levels oh it's oh it's missing all the levels so after i played i played a bunch while i was on vacation and i i was really enjoying myself and then when i got back i went back and read our review of the game which was very positive and about half of the review talks about how amazing the invasion levels are and guess what levels are missing from the vita version the invasion was yeah they're coming later in a patch which is yeah they are but like i don't know why did they release the it's so weird

well that's the thing it's not out in in europe i think or maybe just the uk it's it's not out in in some european territories uh because they said they wanted to like polish up the game but they just went ahead and just fucking launched it in north america they know we don't really appreciate it anyway i guess we don't give a shit to be fair a lot of news websites that covered it i won't name any names they really botched this story. Oh, my God. They did. Why?

Because they said that we, don't worry, it wasn't us. It wasn't us. Oh, thank God. But they said that, you know, 28 levels are missing and however many hundred looms is how they could tell because those looms weren't there. I'm sorry. Let me push my glasses up my nose. Because the looms are like the coins in the game. Yeah, 2,800 looms is like nothing.

Yeah, that'd be nothing. But teen seas, those are the real deal. Jesus Christ. And that's what it was missing. It was missing the teen seas. Here's what I'm confused about. Like, everything I'm hearing about this game is that you're supposed to play it on Wii U.

Because the tablet shit that's in there is, like, dope. Like, super, super clever. And, like, nobody I know has played it. supposed to play it on wii u because the tablet shit that's in there is like dope like super super clever and like nobody i know has played it what how do you it's additional it's extra shit i don't know here's i don't think so because there's a bunch of tablet-esque stuff in the vita version and i'm pretty sure it's very similar to what's in the wii u version which is to say you're controlling this dude using touch as the platforming is going on and those levels where you're using a lot of touch are the worst

levels in the game. Well, that's because you're fucking having to do it. Like, the idea is that on Wii U you have another player doing that shit. It's asynchronous multiplayer. You can do that no, you can do that on Vita as well. You can do multiplayer like that on Vita. It's only that asynchronous mode with one other person playing the normal. It's not asynchronous it's asymmetrical asymmetrical thank you um i i i

think that griffin's probably right from what i've read of other reviews it's fun with wii if you have a lot of people and then you have that person yeah murphy or whatever it's 100 because you basically it becomes an antagonist where you can use murphy to kind of make trouble for people kind of like you could in the uh mario games on wii u yeah uh and and i think that is where the fun is in terms of him helping out at least when we played co-op with the vita version i i unintentionally caused more of a headache for Russ than I did actually. And if you're only playing a single player you have to deal with essentially the AI

controlling whoever's platforming. Which is awful. It's awful. I think Kuchera or somebody ran a story saying this is a fucking killer, or maybe Penny Arcade guys, said this is a fucking killer app for the Wii U. If I was Nintendo, I would be

kind of pissed off that this game, obviously they should be pissed off like this is a fucking like killer app for the wii u if i was nintendo i would be like i would be kind of pissed off that this game obviously they should be pissed off that it made it to other platforms because originally it was originally only going to launch on wii u which is good for them but like from what i've heard it's like a fucking great wii u game yeah and i imagine they're just like looking at it going like god damn like why couldn't we secure exclusivity even timed exclusivity for this bad boy? Like, I think it's exactly the kind of shot in the arm that the Wii U could use right now. Totes.

Or whatever. So, let's talk about something else that isn't how sad Nintendo is right now. Griffin, what do you got going on? I can tell you what I got going on. Boom. um i can tell you what i got going on boom uh my i wrote in the email planning session that the best virtual colonic is outlast but that might be too gross to actually say you just said it oops can you actually describe it because i'm not sure describe what a colonic is well i know how that works are you putting out does the tube go

up your butt or is it like yeah no come on of course not um the joke i guess was that like it makes you poop or something like that because it's so scary and you poop so hard that you're actually cleaning quantics are actually really healthy though oh i regret even bringing this up even as like a half-hearted joke i uh i played outlast for review for our uh for our website polygon.com uh it is i get it confused with a lot of games because i feel like there are actually a lot of games about running through an asylum while like things try to kill you yeah am i just making that up i know it's outlast. There's day daylight. Uh,

what was that man? Not manhunt. The other one where he's in a prison. I forget. He shoots guys. Oh, uh, escape from butcher Bay. There it is.

Chronicles. Yes. Um, it is a game where you are a reporter inside of an asylum and the asylum is owned by some sort of, um, uh, mega company that's up to no good and you're there to expose their acts and like you you have a camera and it is really you

have a camera and a notebook and it's really the only like tools that you have in the game you never get like a gun is it like a gopro or anything like that it's a flip video uh no it's like it's a it's an honest to god It's actually a pretty dope camera because it comes equipped with night vision, and I've never had a camera that has that. A lot of cameras sort of have that these days. So you are using this camera to document what is going inside this asylum,

but shit goes south so very quickly, and then really you're just trying to kind of stay alive. You're trying to outlast these horrible, um, murderous asylum patients. Um, and it is very, very scary.

This is the game that I think infamously made rest fresh to cry in public. Uh, that's accurate. There's video evidence of that happening. Uh, public at E3. That's accurate. There's video evidence of that happening. I played it for five minutes on the show floor of E3. Loud, boisterous, very well lit.

And I literally cried. Yeah. It was a shriek and then my eyes teared up, but I would describe that as crying. There are a few things that it does really well to be very, very scary. The sound design is, like, fucking horrifying.

It's all about being chased. Like, that is the, like, scary thing about the game is that. That you can't have sex? What? Oh, God. That you're being chased by monsters. Oh, oh, oh. so they're forcing you to not have sex i get it for instance uh like just one of like the scary things and it's totally optional but like while you are sprinting away from monsters and vaulting obstacles in your path there's a button that you

can press to look behind you while you run forward and it's like you shouldn't because you need to look in front of you to tell where you're going and where you need to go to hide from these guys but there is a button you can press to like see this giant deformed monster like feet behind you just like waiting to tear you apart and it's like why would you press that button it's like a button you can press if you want to be scared well i think it's the button probably to see if someone is still behind you right oh the music will let you know that there's someone still behind you okay um so there's also like when you hide uh the hiding is is very uh dynamic like you can just like go into a locker which is like a very um binary way of hiding like you know whether they not like open the locker and get you they'll open that fucking locker and rip you right out if there

aren't any hiding spots or if they like saw you go into the room and they know what's up um or you can just like break line of sight with them or if there's like a box you can just sort of crouch down behind it and it you know works the same way um it's the night vision also is the fucking scariest thing ever because it's not just a flashlight like that's what it does really well it's not just like this flashlight that illuminates right in front of you uh it's night vision so you can have it on right next to a monster that doesn't like you're you're hiding you oh and it doesn't give you away it's like sam fisher style right but you can fucking see them and it's like they are right up on your jock and it is super

scary. Also, it cuts your field of vision to like just a few feet in front of you. Oh, wow. But as you zoom forward, like as you zoom in while you have night vision turned on, that sort of night vision effect is projected out in front of you, sort of like it would be if you zoomed in with night vision in real life. So there could be a monster 15 feet away from you that you can't see oh man and you have your night vision on and then you zoom in and all you see is like the reflections of their fucking eyes like a like a cat in a night photo

oh man it's so fucking scary so since you can see them and they can't see you can you do stuff like tie their shoelaces together so they fall yeah they were like stick a banana in their tailpipe yeah yeah they're all kinds of judge reinhold-esque um hijinks that you can get into uh here here's it's very scary there it is far from perfect though like it's so goddamn gory there are there are more than seven billion severed heads inside of the asylum like there are more severed heads than there are human beings on the earth so like it's mathematically it doesn't make sense the gore is just like out of control they have i i made the point in review that like 25 of all toilets and sinks in the facility are like jammed with with like severed arms and legs like somebody just tore somebody's

arm off and tried to like flush it down the toilet and you would think after the first few toilets they would like realize that it just doesn't fit they're just like a you look into a kitchen sink and there's just a face looking up at you like why is there a fucking face in this sink do you ever get like weapons and stuff or is it just never get weapons so you're running away from the objective you're just trying to escape you're trying to outlastlast. It's right there. It's actually, it's actually fairly linear. The only other like sort of gamey thing in it is that your camera drains batteries pretty quickly. So you have to like,

there is this impetus to keep moving forward. Cause if you run out of batteries and you're not finding new ones, then you are just fucked. The thing is, and once you make this realization i actually feel bad kind of pointing it out because it kind of ruins some of the fear of the game is that most of the monsters aren't especially dangerous like once you get caught by these dudes they really have to hit you a few times before you die and it's so easy to just like vault over a table or there are these like uh crawl spaces um that

that sort of separate areas if you can just make it to one of those you're like home safe yeah and like there's no reason why you should be killed by one of those monsters because it's so easy to get past them and like once you realize that you can start like just blowing by them even before they recognize that you're there if you're like going to objective just like fucking running right past them getting to where you need to go hiding and then they go away there's no like hiding and waiting for them to pass which is good because you don't have like a distraction you can't like you know throw a throw a magazine yeah um it at the end of the game there are dudes that will like fucking shiv you and kill you in one hit or just, like, tear your head off.

And, like, those guys do take a little bit more strategy. But, like, there's not much mechanical danger to these guys. And, like, it's kind of a tricky thing for horror games because you have to have some element of, like, fear of failure, which failure which is like how games represent death um but you have to sort of balance that with not being fucking annoying right and frustrating and frustrating and outlast just doesn't even fucking risk doesn't even risk it like most of the guys have very very little lethality and they're like the checkpoints are minutes apart oh yeah that sort of kills a lot of those scares yeah well but the thing is like the game is still very very scary like it still gives you that illusion of danger even though like there isn't there isn't any

really to speak of um yeah interesting well i think it's time for halftime what's been going on guys what's everybody been into we can talk about the Pokemon bank great let's talk about the Pokemon actually I have a lot to say about the Pokemon bank tell me about it what's going on Griffin

Nintendo announced Pokemon X and Y guys some big fucking changes are coming the times they are a change in you know every game you start out you have to pick between three starters yep now there's two sets of three starters wait a minute the second set is the original six starters the original is the the second set that you had to choose from gen one dudes talking squirtle talking charm and we're talking bulbasaur squ. Talking Squirtle, talking Charmander, talking Bulbasaur.

Squirtle, Squirtle. This is all incredibly exciting news. The bigger news is that there's a fucking online bank. Nintendo is finally getting into the cloud storage game, but specifically with these imaginary monsters. And you can pay a subscription fee. What? There's a subscription fee to that?

I think it's an annual fee. I'm not clear exactly what that fee is going to be yet. To store 3,000 of these guys. Okay, each one of those guys is like a kilobyte. There's no reason they should be charging for this. No, I mean, no. No, you've got to be wrong. There's a lot of stats. It's like levels and stats.

It's a Word document. Stats, individual levels, effort values got to be wrong. There's a lot of stats. It's like levels and stats. It's a Word document. Levels, stats, individual levels, effort values. That's crap. Moves, movesets. It's a kilobyte. There's no reason you can't use it. Trainer ID. Oh, my God.

Nintendo. Yeah, you can store them. You can also, using a separate app, you're going to have two apps on your Nintendo 3DS to manage to manage just tell me i have to go back to the home screen to access either one yes uh i'm assuming uh the other one is poke transfer which lets you move your pokemons from pokemon black white black two and white two i should have played that game into your bank. It's a little frustrating for me because I have dudes

like in every generation. And black and white is only the last, I think, gen five. So like there's no way I'm going to be able to like go back to like FireRed and save those dudes. I've got like a level 70 Mewtwo up in there.

Yeah, here's the thing that I've noticed. He's marooned. Here's the issue that I have. I've played Pokemon games where I transfer previous Pokemons and new Pokemon games, and it sort of kills all of the game balance entirely, and I end up getting very bored because you essentially have dope Pokemon

for every set of levels, and you just crush the game. Well, there are checks and balances to it. Yeah, where you can't use 70 Pokemon when you first start, stuff like that. Well, you can, but most of the time they're not going to obey your moves. But still, no one's going to be able to fucking kill them. Right. Yeah, I don't know. It's good that they're planning this stuff, because it's crazy that they haven't had a unified way to get Pokemon from one game to the next ever.

Here's what I don't get, Griffin. And as a resident Pokemaniac, I hope you have an answer for me. Why are there boxes? And why isn't it just one giant fucking box to hold all your Pokemon that you can just sort easily. Why do I need to sort all of my Pokemon into 100-part boxes where I don't know where my Staryu is because it's in box 673? Right. What is the logic? There's not 673 boxes.

That'd be fucking crazy. 74 boxes, whatever that is. Well, let me hit you back with this other question. Okay. Do you keep your underwear and your pants and your shirts and your galoshes and your coat... All in one big box. All in just one big box. Here's the thing.

If that box was a computer that could easily sort my water types from my underwear, I would definitely keep them all in one big box. Have you heard about the new underwear type that they're introducing in Pokemon X and Y? No, I haven't. It's weak against everything. a type that they're introducing in pokemon x and y it's weak against everything um no i think that is it is assuming that the player has like crazy ocd yeah and they don't need to and the bank is taking that idea here's here's the thing they have needed a better solution for compiling i think there's like god i don't even how many, more than 600 Pokemon in the last generation.

I don't even know what X and Y are going to kick that number up to. Like probably over 700. They need a fucking solution for compiling all of the dudes that you have caught into like a single thing. And I think that this is a step in the right direction, but like not if it doesn't go all the way back yeah i would say either that or just start killing off like older pokemon that no one cares about like mr mime come on now he listens you know he listens he does yeah he's very quiet he's a very

quiet listener i don't even want to engage let's move on i have a game to talk about i have a best thing of the week in fact um and my best thing of the week is the best updated version of gauntlet i've played i think ever and that game is hammer watch um hammer watch is a it's essentially gauntlet uh four character classes to pick from top down you're going through dungeons you're collecting coins you're fighting skeletons and all sorts of stuff um but it just um has been updated to like not to remove like a lot of the crappy parts of gauntlet like the food requirements and the like bland level design and stuff like that and in its place they made like

more interesting character advancement and like puzzles to solve and stuff like that um and cool pixel art pixel art which i know justin's a big fan of oh man hey indies i get it you're lucky um but i i really dig it uh and one of the things I dig most about it is that it doesn't require a mouse to play and it runs on my MacBook Air tremendously which has made it my go-to traveling game because you can very easily play it with just the WASD and the arrow keys

it's actually designed to play like that by default and I've just found myself constantly dipping back into it and hunting monsters and buying spells and doing badass stuff in dungeons. So I put a considerable amount of time into this game. How far did you get? What happened? I mean, when I say considerable, I mean, I got the lay of the land.

I played for about an hour. Okay. I didn't really get the appeal. they are okay um i didn't really get the i didn't really get the appeal like i i didn't find that much that was like the the levels are very expansive and yeah i just didn't find that much that i thought was like i didn't find like upgrades to my abilities or spells or any i mean like i got a lot of coins and uh it just wasn't the the appeal with gauntlet i mean one of the part of the appeal of gauntlet is, like, you have these specific levels, and you're going through,

and you know you have to get to the exit, and you have to find the key, and you have to find the exit. This first area I was in just kept going on and on and on and on. Yeah. It felt super sort of like... I was getting more and more lost in this maze-like thing.

And it didn't feel like a level or anything. And the exploration was kind of overwhelming, I guess. Yeah, I would agree. I think the beginning of the game has some pacing issues, definitely. Like you don't get to the first character customization merchant for like a way too long period of time. You could buy like more health and stuff like that but the like cool like where you can buy spells and increase your damage and stuff like that don't come until at least an hour in if not more um there's something about the like exploration of

the levels and finding keys and being really thorough that i found very satisfying. I don't really know why. I guess it hooked into my, like, what I like about Diablo is being very thorough. It's not so much the loot as it is, like, I'm going to explore every nook and cranny of this place and find all the little secrets and stuff like that. And I really dig that about Hammerwatch. It also supports multiplayer, which...

Wow, we could definitely not get that working. Admittedly, Justin and I were not able to get that working. There is local multiplayer, which works. You pretty much have to plug a controller in, but if you're on a laptop, it's not really that hard. And that works well, and I actually like the game more

with multiplayer, because the... As with the original Gauntlet, the character classes really complement each other and do a much better job of sort of clearing through levels than you would solo. game but in terms of like a fun casual i'm gonna play for 10 minutes and then take a break kind of game i've been really enjoying it and would recommend it to all involved yeah i'm always looking for games that run decent on the macbook air they're there you go rare breed they are indeed and it runs great on it doesn't burn your your thighs it's not a thigh burner i don't know i don't on a desk it runs look out for our mac air gaming specific website thigh burner uh faster than light hammer watch don't starve faster than light fucking turns my goddamn macbook air into a jet engine does it yeah yeah like the fan starts

going so hard it starts hovering off the goddamn desk. Like, I can't... I just don't even bother with it anymore. Coolant for your engines. Hey, Justin, what have you been playing this week? Well, I've been playing a game for a review that's sucking my will to live, but I can't talk about it. So I do want to talk about the brief respite

I've had from that game. It has been kind of a surprise. It is Splinter Cell Spiderbot. Love the name. Okay, so we talked about Splinter Cell Blacklist. Okay. Which is a very good game.

And I've been really trying to get all the widgets and what have you. And really make my way through Blacklist. And one of the things that I noticed in the screen was that there was some gear that was locked. And you had to get it from this app called the Splinter Cell Blacklist Spiderbot. So, okay, I'll grab your app. I'll play along.

It was free, which was nice. Imagine my surprise to find a really decent, not just one game, but three games. What? I know. So you play as a little spider type robot. You've got the Sam Fisher, distinctive Sam Fisher three light night vision on you. And the game has three different modes that mirror the three styles of play in Splinter Cell. So if you remember talking about it, there's Ghost, which is quiet and stealthy.

There's Panther, which is stealthy but murderous. And then there's Assault, which is all out shooting and killing. Sorry, if you don't mind, because I know you're going to build it up, I think it's worth pointing out just how awful this sounds. It sounds like a thing that is given to a marketing team where they're like, okay, we have Splinter Cell coming out. We have three cool modes of play. We want it to include a spider,

but also Sam Fisher's magic goggles. It's not a spider. He's tri-pedal. Let me get you with this. The 7-Up Cool Spot wearing the night vision goggles. Serving pizza as the Noid. You have no money and we want three games that capture our benign marketing campaign. In all seriousness, it's a robotic spider.

Is that correct? It's a tri-pedal. It looks like one of the gadgets that Sam Fisher uses. It's not like a spider like a a walking tripod yeah basically a walking tripod like a little metal gear uh yeah sure um in the stealth mode you uh are are trying to get to through a top down all the all it's all presented top down uh the stealth mode, you're trying to get through sort of a maze-like level, maybe a laboratory or a warehouse that's outfitted with motion detection cameras and patrolling soldiers, and you're trying to find a scientist

that you can tase and steal intel from and then get back to the exit unseen. So it feels, I mean mean it captures sort of that early metal gear vibe it's all about like looking for vision cones on the uh which is actually represented with a laser sight on the guards um they're like vents that you can hop in to to hide uh you also have a cloak that you can use um and you're dashing uh no it's uh like invisibility oh yeah so uh you and and if you use that or if the scientist's body is found or you're spotted then you lose points but otherwise you you get a great score so that's the stealth mode in the spider bot mode which is probably is the panther style and probably the most unique,

similar premise, you're running around a maze, but you're being chased by these drones that you can attract, and you're trying to pick up lots of intel that's scattered around the level. And you can run these drones through laser gates as they're following you and try to kill a bunch of them at once, and you get bonus points for staying alive in subsequent levels and then there's the assault mode which is basically a pretty good twin stick shooter in an arena where they're sending all kinds of different robots after you

and you have to kill them and your weapon is upgraded as you kill more and take on bigger enemies and and that kind of thing. There's a giant laser cannon in the center that occasionally turns on and shoots lasers everywhere that you have to destroy. So there's three different modes to this game. And all of them are pretty decent. And the money that you earn in the game can be, like the points that you get in the game can be exchanged for, uh, exclusive gear and blacklist.

So there's like a, uh, an upgrade to your goggles that you can only get with, with this app. There's an upgrade to your, uh, boots that are more like assault focus that you can only get with this app. Um,

and you can also exchange the points that you get in this game into money in blacklist. Oh, neat. Um, and you can also exchange the points that you get in this game into money in blacklist. Oh, neat. Um, yeah. So it's like, it's not only, I started playing it to, uh, get the unlocks. Um, and it took a decent amount of time. I mean, it was not, it was not a lot of these, they basically just want to hook you into the experience. So like once you download it, you have it.

They just wanted your email address or whatever um but there is actually some decent game here i mean i i i there's tons of the stealth levels each of which is like it's not randomly generated i mean they had these are all like pretty well designed levels with different hiding places and stuff like that. Um, and there's tons of those levels in the ghost mode and, and the, uh, twin six shooter is actually really fun. Uh, and the, uh, the, the spider bot mode where you're, you're trying to kill the drones that are following you is surprisingly cool. It's all a touchscreen thumbstick. Um, what I thought it was kind's all touchscreen, thumbstick. What I thought was kind of neat is the thumbstick actually

moves to wherever you put your thumb. So like, if you tap, you don't have to find it. It's wherever you put your thumb, which is nice. I put my thumb in some weird places. But it's free and if you're playing Blacklist then you get some cool stuff out of it

and even if you're not, I mean, free so yeah yeah i i it's it was my biggest surprise biggest tie-in surprise uh of of the year because i i was not expecting much at all and i i have i really enjoy it brought to you by tide i think that wraps it up if you want to. If you want to wash away terrorism, like so much barbecue sauce, like for time. Oh, man. So that's going to do it, I guess? Yeah, that's going to do it. Oh, wait.

Who's like the best whatever thing we do? Oh, boy. I think you are, Justin. I think you won this week. Yeah, you won. Good job, Justin. I think you won this week. I think you guys are just placating me. Congrats. What will you do with your winnings? Your well-earned winnings?

I'll try to find a way to exchange it into Splinter Cell currency. Get some cool boots. At any point, do they refer to it as a spider? Like with a Y? No. I'm just saying that's a mis wrap it up wrap it up okay so that's gonna do it for us here on the besties thank you for your support uh we sure hope you've enjoyed listening to the show if you want more go to polygon.com we got all kinds of features and

reviews and stories and videos and all kinds of junk and it's all there waiting for you um go check it out read your fill and uh be sure to join us again next friday for the besties because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best thing it's got spy in it besties