The Besties - The Besties 73 - A bowl of SteamOS

Episode Date: September 27, 2013

The whole gang is back together! Griffin returns from Japan to regale us with amazing stories of vegetables and video games and video games starring vegetables. By the end of the episode, we get to the big topic of the week: SteamOS. Valve has decided to take down video game consoles! Or are they targeting Windows? Or is their plan something else entirely? With the power of our four noggins, we're bound to uncover the truth in this week's episode of The Besties! 3:00 - Best example of Buyer's Remorse (Grand Theft Auto 5's Social Club) 10:10 - Best talking mask (Marlow Briggs and the Mask of Death) 19:30 - Halftime! 32:30 - Healthiest game (Food Practice Shooter) 40:00 - Best alternative to the absurdly long HDMI cable connecting my PC to my TV (SteamOS) X:XX - 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'm a cookie clicker boy, the most special cookie clicker boy. We're gonna talk about cookie clicker in a little bit. Yeah, we are. My name is Justin McElroy, and I know the best thing of the week. My name is Griffin McElroy, and I thought I knew the best thing of the week. My name is Christopher Plant, and I do know the best thing of the week. My name is Russ Frustik, and I welcome Griffin back to the world of the week my name is russ frustick and i welcome griffin back to the world of united states can we appreciate the world of america look what frustick is doing he said five weeks ago that it's a slow just winding of the spring of this getting louder and louder week after week and he

keeps committed to that it really has gotten louder each week. I love it. This is the besties, as you already know, where we talk about the latest in food, decor, romance, women's issues, men's issues, cookies, and interactive media. But today

we're going to focus on video games. We're just going to pull the microscope in on those specifically to find out what the latest and greatest thing... You know, it's not just Pac-Man anymore. We are going to go behind the candelabra. Is that what that means? I think so.

It means you just zoom right in on an issue. You go behind it. And also, what is behind... What's the back part? Isn't a candelabra the like, the same on both sides? And why do candles need bras? Hmm. Oof.

Huh. No, I don't think so. Let me think about it. No, no, no, no. That was a bad thing to say. Who wants to go first? Not Chris Plant, obviously. He lost his privileges.

I'll go first. Okay. Because it's a bit of a return from last week, but something new that I discovered over the last week. Since it's the only game I've played over the last week. Still Grand Theft Auto. If by you, you mean everyone on the fucking earth. Yeah, my friends list is like every single night.

Pretty much one game. And then the sad guy that's like, I only still have Splinter Cell. Anyway, my thing is... I wish we could still have Splinter Cell. Anyway, my thing is... I wish we could have let Splinter Cell have a longer burn. I was really enjoying the online. I was playing that before I left for Japan. I swear to God, I will never return

to it. It's hella good. I will never go back to it. It's fucking great. It's really great. It's a fucking great game, but I got GTA, and then I got my Pokemons. I just... I don't know when I'll find time. It's like listening to the Beatles again. It'll never happen. Wow. Can't go backwards.

Anyway, my best thing of the week is the best example of buyer's remorse brought to you by GrandTheftAuto 5. So it turns out... You feel bad about buying it? No. Instead of stealing it? No, actually.

I was good. I'm happy with it. But it turns out, and I didn't know this when I was playing earlier, because I guess fewer people, fewer of my friends were playing, but the game will notify your friends list when you do things in the game. Like, for example, when you, like, finish a heist or, I don't know. Well, in my case, it was buy a really, really expensive helicopter.

Like outlandishly expensive helicopter. What if you search the in-game internet for pornography? Yeah, so that's what I was worried about, is that what are they notifying? They let all my friends know. Slip 50 singles into a stripper's g-string. They let all my friends know that I went and bought this

helicopter, to the point where I was getting messages being like, great purchase. How expensive are we talking? Because I've got maybe 50 stacks. I've got maybe 50 Gs in this game. I have no idea. How much is a G again? A G is, well, it depends. Are we talking

pounds? Are we talking sterling? We're talking sterling. In sterling, it is approximately 14 pounds Sterling. Okay, so... And 13 pence. My helicopter was 2 million Gs. What?

Where are you getting these Gs? Later in the game, you do heists and they give you money. That's sort of how it works. I think it's only 200,000. You're talking about the military helicopter, right? Where are you buying this stuff? I'm not actually converting from Gs. But it is $2 million. Where are you buying this'm not actually converting from g's it's just but it is two

million dollars where are you buying this stuff off the internet i've got to get on that internet so what if it fucking and and then like cops shoot a rocket at it yeah you're just out two mil so uh this is a little bit scattered because we're covering a lot of bases here but uh in the case of the helicopters and i believe the planes uh you basically are granted infinite access to this. So every time you run to the helipad, you can just respawn in another one. Okay. So no worries on that. But I did buy a million dollar car

that I then left in a parking lot because I had to do another mission and then it wasn't there when I got back and I got sick. It's probably at the impound, isn't it? Maybe. But I didn't get an email saying it was there and I'm worried that it's gone, gone, gone forever.

Time to do those tow truck missions. Have you bought all the properties? I don't understand why you would spend these large sums of money if you're not buying all these properties. Well, here's the thing is the properties don't really do anything apart from giving you a weekly income, and I already have enough money to buy and sell God. They're exclusive missions.

Yeah, this is a mission, but it's like, yeah,'s like yeah like oh we got robbed go chase down the robber like i don't know that's every time sensitive so like if you don't go take it right away then you'll just get an email like five minutes later like well i guess we'll just handle it but let's deal with ourselves let me return to my original point because i don't want to get derailed too much so it's telling your friends on xbox live uh in my case like when you're making these purchases and it really and like when i like finished the main campaign it let everyone know and it really made me feel uh like i was like a little too visible like as griffin was saying like let's say i'm trying to get 100 because I'm a crazy person I like achievements and one of the things you need to do to get 100%

is to go to the strip club and get a doubles dance from the strippers which I think that is the case. The fact that you know that that's a thing that you can do lets me know that you've already done it. So let's say that happens and then let's say my grandma's on my Xbox and she's like

oh what's Russ up to oh my word like that dude bummersville that's really strange was that you or was that one of our frequent guests that just made that voice that was my impression of my grandma that's so strange because it sounded a lot like somebody who's been a guest on our show before

it was spot on I know it was pretty accurate I wish I could I don't know turn it off i don't want my friends knowing what i'm buying and doing it's very uncomfortable i feel like i'm being but it also has that functionality where like if you beat someone's score on a mission then it tells so that's fine i don't i don't mind that but like like let's say i bought a wedding ring for my digital girlfriend would she be notified on xbox live that i bought a wedding ring for my digital girlfriend would she be notified on xbox live that i bought the wedding ring i you just you just lost me you that's not a real person

it isn't a game no i mean in the game like the girl the girl that i'm dating in the game why would they get a notification because on xbox live they're probably on rockstar social club as well because they live in the world of San Andreas and everyone's part of it. It's like Facebook. I'm just worried about, like, I don't want to be so visible, man. You actually touched on a larger problem with just Xbox

Live in general. I don't really want people knowing that I'm playing video games. Like, that's embarrassing enough. And I don't really want to play video games with people. You know what I mean? I would rather not have that interaction. I would rather not people know what I'm doing, what I've been up to.

You know what they should have for Xbox One is the ability to edit your status and even though you're doing one thing, say like playing GTA, you could edit it and say like, I'm studying the Magna Carta. Downloading Quicken. Yeah, and then everyone's really impressed playing quicken quicken would be so great with connect functionality like pointing to cells and then like i'm broke

yeah quicken quicken i'm broke money me bruh i have some stacks in my account hook it up yeah i feel like i need quicken to manage the three discrete bank accounts in grant just fucking put it all in a single just get married so that's the thing is like they would need to have a scene where they're like okay we're gonna open this joint banking account i did that i did that with my fiance like two weekends ago it took me 40 minutes it's not a fucking big deal it's a fucking easy breezy beautiful deal a new joint account hi my name is michael these are my associates trevor and frank we would like to open a new bank account uh the name it's um crime crime incorporated

is our business i just like picturing this is the beginning of a simple plan. They're like, okay, here's a simple plan. We're just going to put all the money in a shared account, and all of us can just use it. You rappel down the side of the building. I will be in the parking lot in the getaway car, and you just go in there. Here's my identification. Here's a check from another account of mine in case they need that information,

and then just open it up in all three of our names and then I guess we'll go I guess we'll go get in and out sounds good it's the perfect crime what was your thing in the week wait no I have one more thing to say about GTA yes I wish Franklin didn't live where

he lives in the game why is that because he lives in the most maze like impossible to drive location on the entire map live where he lives in the game why is that because he lives in the most maze-like impossible to drive location on the entire map it's like every time you need to go to franklin's house or leave there you're going through the minute towards labyrinth it drives me up a wall anyone else oh yeah i know yours yeah i know what you're talking about his second house not the first house that's spoilers wow he gets the second house so i am my best thing uh let me preface this by saying i'm the one person that did not spend all week like on earth that did not spend all week playing grand theft auto um because i was working on my review for Marlow Briggs and the Mask of Death.

Literally, this is the first time, when you just said that title, it was the first time that it entered my existence. Correct. It is another 505 Games published joint, and they have been adamant about never promoting anything that they publish they are they have a strict rule against it they had it with brothers they refuse to let anyone you

could go to jail for talking about brothers still to this day uh and marlo breaks in the mask of death is the same way it is is it an arg that only exists inside of the completely unpromoted brothers? Whoa. It is made by X8. So it's published by 505, and it is developed. It's developed by Zoopfly. Now, who is Zoopfly? I think they're probably old members of Big Bad Booty Daddy. If you know the name Zoopfly,

they're probably old members of big bad voodoo daddy would be my guess if you if you know the name zoot fly you probably remember them from their uh demo of um ghostbusters that they made that came on the scene like five years ago remember they made zoot fly made a demo of ghostbusters that was the talk of the town so they're from slovenia and uh they also made prison break the conspiracy okay okay right So now you're into it. So Marlo Briggs and the Mask of Death is action-wise. Wait, what is the best? Don't get carried away here. I want to know what the best is.

It's the best mask. Best mask. I put a lot of thought into that. I can think of like five masks off the top of my head. Not as good as this mask because uh it's your okay so marlo briggs is a firefighter and he uh has a girlfriend who's an archaeologist he visits her at a dig site and he is uh killed to get him out of the way then he is wait wait wait wait what do you mean by get him out of the way and and killed by... Wait, wait, wait, wait. Wait, wait. What do you mean by get him out of the way?

And killed by who? So he's killed by the evil people that are running the archaeological dig site because they want his girlfriend to translate

some codices for them and they want to kidnap her. So in order to do that, they kill Marlo Briggs. So she wouldn't do it just out of like her job

because that's her job to translate stuff? She was getting creeped out and she actually wanted to leave because she didn't like this job. Word, word, word. So she wouldn't do it just out of like her job because that's her job to translate. She was getting creeped out and she actually wanted to leave because she didn't like this job. So Marlow is killed but when they kill him they kill him with this ancient weapon

that turns him into the sacred warrior and he is brought back to life. They probably should have used a different weapon. Yeah that was poor planning on their part at best. If they used a gun or like a big rock or their own hands really. Any weapon would not have had this effect. They could have just waited for him to die of like natural

causes. He's got a butt. So he's brought back to life by I think the ancient weapon, but he might have also been brought back by the Mask of Death that is a disembodied mask that was apparently some sort of ruler or king of some

tribal people long ago and now he has a floating mask that the conceit is that he is the camera basically so you're looking through the mask's eyes and he talks with Marlow as he pursues his

quest for vengeance. Can I ask the fuck did this human being get turned into a mask uh it did that is crush him down into like into like his human essence and then like pour it into a mask mold and then that is a story for another time uh i'd like to hear it now no i don't have time there's just too much. It is actually hinted at in the end of the game. Is it his face? They cut his face off and then like tanned it somehow? I can't tell you anymore. I've already said too much. Action wise, it's sort of basically

exactly kind of like God of War. You have several different weapons you can switch between on the fly. You have dodging mapped to the right thumbstick so he's moving around very fluidly is it the same camera as god of war uh i don't god of war's camera is fixed yes right yes mostly yeah i mean you can't control it yeah well then yes yeah then but in this case you're looking through

the eyes of a mask man yeah but that's it's not like there's like you know it's like a lot to you in super mario 64 yeah not that dissimilar actually um so he uh it tonally and and this is the thing that i think differentiates this game a little bit uh tonally it's somewhere between um the last dragon black exploitation classic the last Oh my god, really? And Big Trouble in Little China. It's very silly. It's very sort of self-referential.

And not in a forced way. It's just really dumb all the time, almost belligerently. So, there's a level called The Level Where Marlow Hangs Upside Down From a Helicopter. belligerently so um there's a level called the level where marlo hangs upside down from a helicopter that's like that's the name of the level you know what he does you hang upside down from a helicopter and you can swing back and forth and collect orbs uh you get experience

there's great dialogue throughout at one point you're fighting you're fighting a giant squid and the mask says i've never seen so many horrifying tentacles and marlo briggs says after this is over remind me to show you some stuff on the internet like that that kind of classic repartee is what makes this the best mask of the year that punchline could have been like way more offensive i probably didn't do it sir justice so it sounds like that um shadows of the damned in terms of tone uh yeah you know what that's not that's not that far off they don't quite lean into sort i kind of wanted a bit more the trailer makes it seem very uh grindhouse i guess okay uh something closer to uh like house of the dead overkill okay um and this is not

that but the gold the gold fucking standard the gold standard writing in general i guess yeah right um this is not that but this is uh a lot of fun it's very snappy it moves you from thing to thing to thing there's lots of variety in between the actual combat there's like uh there's turrets of course but then there's turrets, of course, but then there's also like some vertical scrolling, shoot them up type levels. Is it fun to play? Does it feel good to play it?

Yes. Do you like God of War? Yes. I like the first two. But no chains, right? Griffin, you'll enjoy this. Marlow has a ice spell, and sometimes when he casts it, he shouts, aw, sleet, sleet, sleet. Does he really? Yes. You're right. this marlo has a ice spell and sometimes when he casts it he shouts oh sleep sleep sleep does he

really yes you're right justin you're right i did enjoy that i thought you would enjoy that uh it's really silly and they're a leaderboard there there's these like little twitchy challenges like the like this the uh vertical scrolling shooter there uh there are some like platformy type bits where you're sliding down a mountain dodging obstacles and those you can actually replay individually from the main menu uh and compare your uh times with friends or people all across the globe now when i say people all across the globe the important thing to remember is nobody owns this game as near as i can tell i'm one of 500 people on the planet that have purchased this product so is this uh is it a downloadable game is it yeah it's on xbox it's on piece it's on steam and xbox live arcade okay um

and the great thing about it is because so few people own it you can really like feel great about the leaderboards there are there of the challenges, I was ranked number two in two of them. And I was in the top ten in several others because no one's playing it. So with just a little dedication, you can feel like a real game wizard. You didn't push yourself to try and claim the top spot?

Actually, the top spot was so firmly held onto by a gentleman whose username was I'm High right now i couldn't get into a battle of wits with did you know right now you didn't think about getting high also maybe that was what was giving him his keen edge no i i didn't you're right i should have thought of it's kind of interesting to think that whenever anyone thinks of his gamer tag he then becomes high to make it accurate like he might be at work and then someone oh my god i gotta go get high someone just looked at my someone's playing marlo briggs it's the only

way to make it authentic well so that's a nice little surprise it's fun yeah 15 bucks xbox live and steam um is there is a review up yet i should be up today maybe tomorrow depending on when arthur gets it done you want to tell me the score? I don't know what the score is. I mean, yeah, but you say like, I played five minutes of it, and let me tell you, this bad boy's a seven. Well, it started that way, but then he said I'll sleep, sleep, sleep.

So I had to bump it up a few points. You guys want to hear about Japan? You bet I do. I come bearing gifts of Eastern philosophy. Okay. I don't really. I went to Japan for the Tokyo Game Show. I'd never been before.

A whirlwind of news erupted from the Tokyo Game Show. Is that a whirlwind, Bork? We got about 70 stories out of this. It was a lot of stories. I mean, 70 is a pretty good number. I don't... But I think you're being facetious there for a second. Well, I'm only being facetious because

while I think it was a lot of stories, and speaking as someone who has covered Tokyo Game Show in the past, I know it can be a little frustrating because you kind of work your butt off for a week, and most of the games that you're writing about either a won't come out in the u.s or b don't really like have any like digestible concept going on right it is a it is a tricky tricky show to cover because like a lot of the games you can play and sort of appreciate them for face value despite the language barrier.

And then there are role-playing games. Yeah. And the like, which are like, I played like a 20-minute long demo for Lightning Returns, the new Final Fantasy XIII game, and just like no fucking idea what I was doing, what was going on, what was new. Like they were showing off new stuff.

Couldn't figure it out. Mike luckily had played it before and could handle that a bit. And you also probably had a helper with you right um yeah but not one that spoke spoke english right there was very little of of that which is helpful pointing though there's some helpful pointing yeah and for some games that worked really really well like um uh i i mean you play like i played the castlevania hd whatever that 3ds hd remake that they're doing and you know pointing it at different things on the screen that could get the point across but for final fantasy 13 lightning returns like that dog won't

hunt anyway it was kind of an outlier year just because next gen was there um so there really was a lot of stuff to see um trying to think like the big stuff oh i saw dead rising 3 which i also saw at gamescom and the frame rate was like dog shit at gamescom um but it's looking way way better now they had it locked at 30 frames per second which is did you play it no still haven't got no go hands on with it but like you could tell during the gamescom demo like i was very worried uh because that is like the only launch day xbox one game that i would consider picking up an xbox one for yep and um it looked it looked guys it looks super bad so um but tgs it was running it was running butter smooth they were showing off some of the co-op

stuff which looks insane okay i don't care about video games all i care about is one thing produce i didn't eat the 15 peach we walked we walked right the fuck by it what is wrong and i said oh there's that big juicy peach we'll catch it on the way back didn't got distracted oh my god griffin you've made a lifelong error i ate everything else though i ate a meat bun uh can i tell the story of mike and i sure uh misguided sushi adventure? Mike and I went out to dinner the last night we were there, and I wanted to eat sushi, but we were staying in Chiba where there aren't many cheapo conveyor belt sushi establishments.

So I got on Google, and even Googling things in Japan is kind of tricky because you have to search for the terms in Japanese characters, which means putting it through a translator and then putting it into Google and then hoping that it auto-translates. It's very, very confusing. But I managed to find one, and I thought, oh, great, let's go here. So we went, we walked there, and then we got in. Nobody spoke any English. There were no English menus, and they didn't have those, like, stupid English menus with the pictures of the food and you point at the food and then they bring it to you

um and so mike got on google or i got on google translate mike opened up a wikipedia article and we literally like kind of improvised our way through the meal and it was delicious it was very good and we had a good time um and then we got our check and because we couldn't see the prices on the on the japanese venue we ended up spending 140 between the two of us oh that per diem is just right out the window it was good though it was good i'm not sure it was we had like maybe maybe 10 pieces of sushi each oh god so like now was this jiro did you go to jiro by accident we didn't accidentally go to jira no we weren't in a subway station okay the place was very jiro-esque in that it was just like everybody sits on a long bar and then they make that shit right in front of you they make like

one piece at a time and you eat it it was awesome it was great it's been like god damn 70 i could have had like a super potato orgy with that kind of cash. So I don't know if I mentioned this when I was there. I had a similar experience where they didn't really have any English menu, but they did give me finally after they realized how confused I was. I asked, and they gave me this. I don't remember if I've mentioned this before, but I do want to read this menu that they gave me.

You brought it home with you? No, I took a picture of it, so it's online's online oh okay um one of the items was beef tongue and here's the description was the cow tongue uses streptocarpus i am wimpy and buy a high quality streptocarpus with an errand wall thickness in this shop and offer cow tongue burning condition the things which made the cow tongue ground meat prepare for a lot of cooking that i arranged i mean you can kind of figure out what's going on there what is streptocarpus that's the that's the sounds like a disease the scientific name for what cow my lord delicious food there probably the best consistently good food except no breakfast option

there oh man we had to fucking i ate a lot of balance ups yeah it's all like fish and rice for breakfast balance ups are these little hot pockets but imagine they're more like sandwiches with sort of a graham cracker on both sides and then a filling between them so like it was somewhat familiar but my first day there i saw one that said cream cheese and i thought oh this will be a sweet little treat and so i bought it no they were going with the very literal definition of cream cheese so it was more like a savory breakfast treat yeah um i did a bad job at shopping that day but yeah i mean the food is fucking great across the board i would go back in a heartbeat would love to get

justin there would love to see justin in that go back in a heartbeat. Would love to get Justin there. Would love to see Justin in that environment. Justin would be in a strange place. I don't think he'd be very comfortable. We rode the train into TGS on the first public day when like 300,000 people or whatever showed up. Oh, man. Yeah.

Oh, boy. That train car was a-rockin'. Nuts to butts. I have a question. Did no one put cookie clicker on their thing yeah i was waiting for you to bring it and then you brought that other game uh well i that's why i'm so confused i can i talk about it a little bit for halftime or do you want to save it for next week or no go ahead we can talk about it even at a nice brisk pace yeah okay great cookie clicker Okay, great. Cookie Clicker is the best game. It is not a game. It's basically a spreadsheet

where you manage cookie production. Sure, you can click cookies, but that's for saps. Because as you click cookies in Cookie Clicker, there's one giant cookie that you click. You don't click several cookies. I got confused there for a second. There's one big cookie, you click it

and that gives you more cookies. Yep. But, just clicking the cookie, like I said, saps. Because you can use those cookies to buy other means of cookie production. So like, for instance, the cheapest is

you can buy a cursor that will click the cookie automatically for you. Very helpful. Then once you save up more money, you can buy grandmas that will make cookies to help augment your cookie production. The upgrades go all the way to farms and factories and cookie mines and cookies from space, cookie alchemy, cookie portals. Okay. That kind of thing.

And each one is increasingly more expensive, but also produces more cookies. There are also upgrades that you can buy that help you increase your overall cookie production and achievements for reaching certain goals in quotes and those give you more milk and you can buy cats that eat the milk and always always in service of additional cookie production yeah so uh justin turned me on to this i've been hearing people talk about it for the last week or so. But Justin, before the show, was like, I'm going to talk about this game, even though I kind of forgot.

He eventually remembered, and he was like, you should play it. So I booted it up. It's essentially Candy, what was that game called? Candy Shop? Candy Box. Candy Box. It's essentially Candy Box, but where Candy Box had, like, some modicum of skill requirement and strategy, where you, like, had to plan out, like,

potions and, like, going on missions and stuff, this game has none whatsoever. It's really the most mindless game I think I've ever seen. It is adamant in its... Well, the only ways you can... There is a lot of... If you want to do some extensive math, there is a lot of, if you want to do some extensive math,

there is a lot of math you can do regarding the best way to spend your money, because, see, upgrades become more expensive the more of them you buy. Like, not upgrades, sorry, the equipment. So, like a farm or a factory. If I have a hundred alchemy labs, for example,

or a hundred portals, my 101st portal is going to be a lot more expensive than my first one. So you do have to kind of figure what's the best. You don't have to. I guess the only skill is figuring out the best expenditure for your money

to increase your cookie production rate. But you're right in the sense that there's not really a skill factor involved. It sort of refuses to do that. It's just about optimizing cookie production. And it is also a fascinating tool. It's really edutainment about how many a trillion is. Because you may think you're making a lot of cookies when you're making a million cookies a second. But a million cookies a second isn't cool.

You know what is cool? A billion cookies a second. Is there anything cooler than a billion, though? Well, what I found out is that a trillion is actually better than that. Our friend, David Zhao, who, of course, works on Polygon every day to make it the best site he can on our product team. The best site he can. Like, he knows what he's working with. A hundred billion cookies a second he's producing.

And you get these updates that are, as the cookies get, at first it's like, new cookie recipe discovered and as you increase your totals to david's out uh type levels the messages are like all all space in universe filled by cookies uh no more room for living matter because i've produced a trillion cookies at this point i mean there's it's no big deal i don't want to like brag about it um but does something happen apart from more cookies when you unlock the antimatter condenser which is the last thing in this store uh no no i have 23 of those they're not a big deal um there is an end game is there yes as i have been told there is an end game this this may be a creative fiction but as far as i know there is an end game yes and when does that happen i i don't know i've been trying to stay dark on i don't want to ruin any

of the plot twists for myself. Besides, I'm really, really, really busy right now, these days, clicking on cookies. So I don't really have a lot of time for free reading. I would say what are those birds called that dip their... Angry birds. No, they dip their nose in the water and then

pop up again. Pelicans? Pelicans. No, I don't mean the living birds. The toy. Oh, yeah. The dipping bird. It's fair to say that a drinking bird has the same chance of winning cookie clicker as Justin McElroy does. Which is to say. Given an infinite amount of time, maybe, but not really.

What do you mean? Because I am optimizing production. I'm a people person. I make sure the grandmas are working with people in the factories. And it's just magnificent. It's magnificent. Have the grandmas tried to unionize yet, or is it still? I do have some anti-grandmas, which work with the other grandmas.

I'm not exactly sure what they're doing right now. But I really want to boost their efficiency because they are slacking. Let me talk about the opposite of cookies. Can I transition to mine? Yes, please. Can I talk about the opposite of cookies, which is vegetables, as we all know? While in Tokyo, I'm kind of breaking our rule of talking about games that are available for everyone to play because not only is this not a game available to everyone

right now it is a game that will never be available to anyone but me probably um in the past uh it is a game that i played uh on the show floor of the tokyo game show um i some sort of scientist i've forgotten his name showed me the game i wrote it up you can read our write-up on polygon.com um it is called food practice shooter and it is the healthiest game food practice shooter which um the acronym for which is fps right uh is a light gun game and there's a giant super soaker-esque light gun that you shoot at a screen at encroaching vegetable monsters let me know when you start to fall off the plot and i'll stop and try and catch you back up there are three kinds of vegetables that are attacking you uh sorry two two vegetables

one fruit uh there is bell peppers there are carrots and tomatoes so every time you shoot one of these uh it depletes your ammo of one of those three types so you have bell pepper ammo you got carrot ammo you got tomato ammo you shoot a tomato ammo. You shoot a tomato, your tomato ammo goes down. If one of them hits you, your ammo goes down a lot. So if a tomato hits you, you're going to lose a lot of tomato ammo, etc., respectively. When you run out of ammo, the way that you refill it is you dock your gun. There's a little holster on the floor. You can't just put it in your pants because it's super big.

there's a little holster on the floor. You can't just put it in your pants because it's super big. You put it on the floor, and then you eat vegetables, or in the case of this demo, since I imagine real produce won't last very long on the TGS show floor, vegetable-flavored biscuits. You eat it. The scales are weighted. Oh, by the way, you're also wearing a headset

that monitors your chewing. So you eat the vegetable-flavored biscuit. The scale detects how much food you've taken. The chew receptor figures out how much you're enjoying the food, I guess, with your chews. And it replenishes your ammo of the type of biscuit that you've eaten. Then, to get back in the game, you pick up your gun. There's a camera mounted on the gun facing the player.

You have to smile into the camera before it'll start the game back. As if to say, As if to say, Yummy yum. These veggies so yummy. Griffin like. And then the game starts again.

Then you blast your way through, right? You blast your way through right you blast your way through the level when you finish the level it tells you the nutritional value of all the things you've eaten what's up wow who is this game for is it like something you install at a dentist office or is this i don't think so because these these biscuits are fucking disgusting and they will get all up in your teeth they're like those little plaque tokens little plaque candies you eat that show you where the plaque is that that shit was in i had like like six hours later like i whistled like a piece of tomato biscuit came out so would they have to wait it if you would they have to

calibrate it for different fruit and vegetables like it when you're using actual ones of those or is it just sheer weight of of veg um i think that you probably have to program it down which isn't too hard to do you know if i can do it with my fitness pal um some some sort of japanese scientist can probably make that um easy to populate in the home version of food practice shooter um but it's so great the guy didn't speak much english um so he sort of ran me through the idea of the game via a slideshow and the idea is like obviously wanting to form a bond between kids and vegetables that's why you have to smile like a positive yeah there was a picture of and the pictures in the post because it's the fucking

funniest it's the funny i will never do or say anything funnier than this slide uh it is of a man who is like half dressed up like a bandit which is confusing uh and he's holding out a fishing rod and the first slide which isn't in the post uh he had a vegetable in the fishing rod and a child ran away from it and then in the second picture uh hanging above the vegetable uh was a nintendo ds and the kid was running right for it the kid was smart i want that so maybe he's like the japanese hamburger it is tricking kids into eating vegetables by putting them into a video game and then after you eat these disgusting vegetable cookies you have to smile as's like i smiled when i ate that vegetable cookie so i

guess i like vegetables more than i thought that's a lot of effort if we could put fucking bingo from the biggest loser on this he'd be trim good body instead of afraid of these goddamn vegetables um you know they could just like give the kids dessert if they eat all their vegetables that pretty much is a good motivator too cancels out though doesn't it, doesn't it? Because then, you know what they're going to do? They're going to frown. There's no... You can't say to your kid, you're going to eat this carrot,

and then you're going to fucking smile, and then maybe I'll give you a brownie. Yeah. Because then you sound like you're abusive. You're an abusive parent. But they're going to get a brownie for it. You're going to get a brownie, but you're going to smile after you eat that brownie.

What they need is a game where you eat a brownie to start the game, but you have to frown the whole time while you play it. Ugh, brownies. Brownies, disgusting. I think they could probably work this into, I feel like this was a little bit on the nose, they could just have some sort of Wii U peripheral

that shuts the console down every 30 minutes unless you just continuously eat vegetables. There could be a scale, there could be a plate full yeah like chock full of vegetables what if you have a timer next to it that says 30 30 minutes or if you want to put your kids on blast like five minutes like you then all of a sudden we're talking about like a minute to win a challenge but what if like the kids got smart and they cut the brownie in the shape of a broccoli. Yeah. I mean, that's definitely possible. Like an obvious loophole.

Yeah. I didn't think about that. Mm-hmm. I guess you're going to have to install some kind of sensors in this kid's tummy. Yeah. To, like, detect, like, the glucose that's going in there. Yeah, this is really just the beginning of this road. There's a long road to walk still, I think.

As long as we're getting it in that kid's organs and stuff. We could just put a tube in there that puts all the good stuff from vegetables directly into it. The problem is that the vegetables in the mouth, it's like the worst possible place for vegetables to go. Right, so if you just jammed them right in the stomach, they wouldn't even know. Right, if you want them to get in that tummy somewhere because once once the once the cauliflower is past your tongue like it's like not offending you anymore it's doing you good it's like you have to pass it's kind of fucked up that vegetables are that way like they have to you have to pass this trial before you can you can get good stuff from yeah yeah so if we could just like get in this kid um get some sort of valve that we can

just like put the stuff into it close it digests i like anyway just this if the if you are listening scientists who invented this game um maybe make that your next project probably gonna be a little hard to gamify but you know it's worth if if the if the in justifies the means i'll cut up i'll cut some kids who wants to go next bring us home how did we get there um okay i went to japan i flew i flew 6 000 miles oh okay um my thing is uh best alternative to the massive, or I guess just really long HDMI cable that is running from the PC and the upstairs of my house

to the television in the downstairs. You know what's weird is we don't track live listeners, but for whatever reason, our listeners just skyrocketed. I don't know why. I think it was a long HDMI cable. It probably did it. I'm sorry. I don't cut children during my segment.

It's surgery. It's for science, Chris Plant. You didn't pay attention to anything except the end. No wonder you'd be horrified. Okay. All these journalists are going to report from this episode, Griffin McElroy cuts kids because they didn't listen to the whole fucking thing. You guys hear about the Steam os thing yes yeah so you know the basic test yeah no give me give me the elevator pitch maybe i'll get excited this time

valve uh people who made steam have made an os an operating system like windows but it's a linux based so it will uh be free and people can put it on their computer machines, and it'll mostly be used to run video games, presumably through Steam, and it's called SteamOS. You can also use it to stream games from, say, your PC to a SteamOS device that you can plug into your television, and that's the exciting part, if it actually works, is I have a computer upstairs. Right now it has a really long hdmi cable uh that is gross and i have tape up and down my

walls i i look uh just disgusting um and i can get rid of that i can scrub the tape goo off my walls and i can plug in a steam os device if it works. So the thing that I think is confusing about this, and the reason I think that, like, I think maybe they did themselves a disservice by, I don't know, it keeps people talking about it all week, which I guess is a plus. You know, you get the buzz going. But I kind of feel like without the full picture here,

it's really hard to judge my reaction to this news like i guess it doesn't matter of course i can't make a buying decision of any sort right now so it doesn't really matter but um if if the thing that they're talking about is a a dongle that plugs into the hdmi port on my television um i i would be interested in that as a way to get my PC games to my TV. Yeah, essentially like the Chrome thingy that they just got put out. Yeah, exactly. If it's that we're talking about, I'm kind of into it. And it could still be that.

We don't know what will happen. Well, you know what happens, dear listener, because you're listening to this on a Friday afternoon. But at the moment, we don't know. And if the Steam Box machines, that's what they started talking about on Wednesday, if those are just another PC, I don't really, I'm not sure I understand the utility.

Chris, I know you were talking about this on Polygon Live, our new streaming live video show that we do during the week with Chris. What was his sort of takeaway? Oh, I mean, I don't know if you know this about Chris Grant, but he's ever the optimist about new things. He was one of those, you know, the OUYA is going to change the world type of people. He definitely sees the potential in it.

I think the conclusion that we came to was this isn't like a console killer, which is one of the original, you know, kind of thoughts or theories about SteamOS that, you know, finally we'll have a cheap computer that just works and it will be an alternative to the PlayStation, Xbox, and everyone will use it. That doesn't sound like what this is at all. It's the opposite. It's Linux. So it's going to already be a little confusing for people it plays less games uh there there seem to be more barriers uh to entry than than we thought

but they are going to have like they're going to sell a steam machine as it's called and it's probably going to let's say it costs 700 and it only runs steam os you could also stream it wait one second you could also stream the games but for argument's sake let's just say it only runs SteamOS. You could also stream it. Wait, one second. You could also stream the games, but for argument's sake, let's just say it only runs SteamOS games. Don't you think that if Steam puts all their weight behind this and don't you think that's going to

pretty dramatically increase the number of people and game developers that make games that support SteamOS natively? So it could, or, since it's an open os somebody could make a unbelievably pirate friendly version of steam os put it out there it becomes incredibly popular and no developer wants to get anywhere near it what does that mean pirate friendly you could make a version of steam os that has a program in it that knows to look for the newest versions of

torrents for any new game that comes out and automatically downloads yeah but if you're yeah but you have to connect to steam still and steam has uh security measures you don't because it's open platform so you don't have to use steam yeah but then you could do that for on linux you could do that today exactly but most people don't use linux i'm not saying it's not going to work. Sounds awesome. You can get all these games for free. I just think the problem is, and this is like a classic Valve thing, is I don't know if they know

what it is yet. It's just like Greenlight, where they announce these things, and everyone gets so excited, and they're like, Valve, man, they know how to do it right. It gets announced, and there's no details. What the fuck did they announce? They announced, we're doing hardware, and we're partnering with other people to do it right and well well hold on and there's no details what the fuck did they and like they announced we're doing hardware and we're partnering with other people to do it too like yeah dog you fucking like announce that in february yeah and and it's even like i don't think

they're gonna announce the hardware on friday maybe i'll be eating my words when this goes live but i think they'll talk about a controller and there'll be plenty of mystery left for the next few months i mean no yeah i don't think they're going to announce the hardware on friday i i don't think they'll announce like a box the literal like specs of the box or anything like that i just think it's so confused i don't understand i think it makes sense it's just a stream okay like if it's just a little thing like an apple tv or like an apple tv or whatever like yeah if it's that and it's streaming my pc games to the tv and it's sort of like a big picture mode adapter like i'm i'm into it i think that's

what i don't understand why one of the options is going to be that though i think that i don't understand why it has to be muddied though with this but what i don't understand is the box i don't understand why i'm going to buy another computer that doesn't do all the things a computer does in service of like like, I don't know. Well, I'll tell you from my perspective, if Valve came out and was like, here's this $400 dedicated, like, agreed upon specs PC box that you don't have to worry about drivers. You don't have to worry about this and that. You know what games 100% are supported by this box. I seriously, like, I don't have a pc right

now i'd seriously consider it right but you are you are so in the minority on that yeah like there are so many people who have pcs like i bought my pc last year and like i bought it i i bought it you know with the intention of it being fairly modular and that like if new shit comes out i can just fix it up and upgrade it without having to throw the whole goddamn thing out the window. Sure. And I won't have to do that if I buy a Steam machine, but, like, I don't want to have two of these fucking things sitting around.

Okay, but the question is, do you have that PC hooked up to your TV right now? No. I have a bigger crackpot theory about it and that is gabe newell hates windows they've said that they don't like windows 8 they know that if windows 8's app store becomes a hit that it would make steam somewhat maybe i think i mean i think you mean when it becomes a hit okay yeah yeah yeah but but with SteamOS, they may eat Microsoft's lunch. I mean, the PC sales are going down.

The only PC sales that are going up are game sales. And if all of these big PC companies give all the buyers an option to say, hey, do you want to take $200, maybe $150 off your computer price and we'll just install SteamOS and it'll boot to the games, which is all you're going to use this thing for anyway. That's the threat, right? Yeah, I want that. That's the thing I want. But for that to be desirable, they have to get a lot more games working on Linux. And I think they will.

Or find a wrapper that can make. And I think they will. Or find a wrapper that can make it. I think they will. I mean, you know, if you look at like, obviously when Mac support launched for Steam, there was like 50 games. And now it's obviously

not wide, wide, but it's... Yeah, there's 55, 56. No, there's definitely... New ones added every quarter. There's definitely quite a few Mac games on there. And I think, you know, we see with Humble Bundle and stuff like that, like a few mac games on there and um i think you know we see with humble bundle and stuff like that like all those come out on linux and mac and pc

um i would not be surprised if a lot of developers were incentivized to reach this new audience and uh you're gonna see a lot more support for it i guess i just feel like with my pc the advantage the thing i like is the not just modular nature of the hardware but modular nature of the of the software i can you know if a game isn't on steam you know i can try it out uh you know demos that that people release or even you know tiny indie games that don't even justify a commercial release. Or Cookie Clicker. Or Cookie Clicker, for crying out loud. Can I click cookies on this?

Yeah. But that, to me, is one of the big strengths of PC. And I just don't see a big range of consumer for someone who wants to pay the same price as one of the new consoles, for someone who wants to pay the same price as one of the new consoles, but that would go with this box over just buying a computer. I don't really get... I'm sure I'll eat my words because it's Valve, and they can throw nigh-infinite money at a problem,

but I guess I just don't understand the appeal, and I kind of feel like the onus is on them because I don't think they've done a great job of explaining why I want this thing. I do wonder if it's an issue of perspective, though, where we were really prepared for this to be kind of an immediate game changer. You know, this box that came out and it's like, oh, duh, that's the PC that is going to go in the living room. And that maybe this is... Look under your chair. There's one right now. Maybe this is like a five or even a 10-year game where as most programs that we use move to be on a browser

that would easily run on Linux, that maybe our desktop will be so transportable, I guess, that it doesn't really matter what platform you use for those programs. So, you know, in five years, most games will be developed for Linux maybe, possibly if, you know, Valve has enough sway. And then everything else that I do on my computer, I'll be doing in a browser anyway. So it won't even matter, you know, if'm on mac or windows or linux so linux will

become my gaming system uh and then everything else will be you know what i take to work yeah i i think valve has a pretty clear long lead idea of where this is going and i think a lot of people thought it was pretty silly when they first launched Steam with Half-Life 2. Pretty silly. And look at that. It sort of paid off enormously huge for them. Oh, yeah. And I think most people think this is a good idea.

It's just how they're going about it seems. It's just a very... Erotic or half-life. Yeah. It is really... Like, there's no elevator pitch to quickly explain what the hell is going on. like there's no elevator pitch to quickly explain what the hell is going on and i mean it's it's a lot of the problem that microsoft had with uh the xbox one and their whole e3 debacle was that like it was so complex to explain how this thing worked now obviously steam you know isn't talking about

anything that would piss anyone off but it's also like equally complex and hard to wrap your head around and i think but that being said i think they have a very clear idea of like how they want to expand and this seems like they really would take a chunk out of microsoft like you know as someone who has considered getting a gaming pc in the past this looks like a potentially alternative option okay i guess uh yeah absolutely absolutely. And I think that there are some people like that. I just can't shake the feeling that if you're the sort of person that would buy a Steam-branded Linux box that plays PC games and also you don't have a PC,

but also you're aware of this product. Like that seems to me to be a crazy thin sliver. Not if they have a deal with Best Buy. If they have like, they're selling it in Best Buys and blue shirts are telling people, you know, to buy this thing because it makes gaming easy. Yeah.

I think they're both right. The reality is messaging on PCs in general just has has to be cleared up because even if you're in best buy i i don't think you can trust a blue shirt to explain why a pc is better than uh i will trust the blue shirt with my life nothing nothing wrong with blue shirts i just would say that most that i've spoken with usually direct me to the blu-ray section when i ask for a playstation also the geek squad knows exactly what they're talking about because they wear ties. Let them put whatever they want on your computer. You need it.

You need it. How else are you going to manage your printer? Think about it. So who wins? That's my question. Who wins this week? Who's trying to fucking save our youths by piping nutrients directly into their beaks? This is all the worst.

There's no way Griffin won because he didn't eat the peach, clearly. And he missed the best produce on the planet. You have to rub that in, huh? I'm sorry, it was your choice. No, Justin won because his game reminded me of Shadow Man. And I want to play that. Wait, why did it remind you of Shadow Man? Because it had the name Shadow Mask

and you wear the mask of shadows in Shadow Man. It actually the mask of death did you pay attention no not really i'll start talking about same thing they're like shadow mask i only hesitate because i don't think he made a good argument about why this is the best mask of the week yeah did you hear that line about tentacles that was a stitch sleep sleep sleep okay fine okay you won uh thank you so much for listening to our program yet again uh we we sure appreciate you being here if you want to read more you want to check out food practice shooter or maybe my review of marlo briggs and the mask of death uh you can head over to polygon.com or follow us on Twitter at Polygon, Facebook slash Polygon, YouTube slash Polygon, Polygon.com.tumblr.com,

and plus.google.com forward slash plus Polygon. God, it rolls right off the tongue and into my brain. I know, it just trips. Right in my long-term memory banks. Oh, and check out our new show if you like listening to things. You can turn it on 2 p.m. Eastern most days. You can find it on pluspolygonpluslive.org, plus plus, Google Plus, Google Buzz,

and then you click on Buzz, and then you go into Settings, and then you click Enable Polygon Opinions, and then it's going to give you the wrong URL just because Google needs to do some work on their backend. Throw a few pluses in there. You're going to be just fine. This is all in the GTA web browser, right? Mm-hmm. Oh, by the way, you have to do it in the GTA web browser.

Okay. It's all via Pebble. Are you telling me you guys didn't search porn in the GTA web browser just to see what came up? I wasn't looking to be, like, fucking aroused by Grand Theft Auto. I just wanted to see what came up. I wasn't looking to be like fucking aroused by Grand Theft Auto. I just wanted to see what came up. I did it on Jimmy's computer because I thought if that fucking, if anyone's going to have some shit bookmarked, it's going to be Jimbo.

Wildly disappointed. You don't mean Polygon Video Shooter. Yeah, I was confused too. Polygon producer, Jimmy Shelton. You mean Jimmy. That's what I thought. I was like, wow, that's real. No, I was talking about the in Polygon producer, Jimmy Shelton. You mean Jimmy... No, that's what I thought. I was like, wow, that's real. No, I was talking about the in-game character, Jimmy.

I thought you were in Tokyo, found Polygon's own Jimmy Shelton's computer. So that's going to do it for us this week of The Besties. Make sure you guys get in next Friday for The Besties, because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best things? Besties!