The Besties - The Besties 76: Poor, poor Sonic

Episode Date: October 26, 2013

I come here to praise Sonic, not to bury him. Wait, that's wrong. I come here to bury him — or at least the happy memories I once had of him. Fortunately, my besties Justin and Griffin have positive things to talk about, like the surprises of The Stanley Parable and oh my gosh Candy Box 2 is out! So yes, while I'm sad to see the mascot of my childhood continue to struggle through my adult years, I can take solace in the cornucopia of other good games being released on a weekly basis. 3:20 - Best first level of a not-so-good game (Sonic: Lost World) 15:15 - Best tutorial (How to Survive) 22:20 - Halftime! 26:00 - Best endings (The Stanley Parable) 37:00 - The winner is everyone! 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!

Rachel and I are putting together our wedding reception playlist, and I added Ginuwine's Pony to the list a little while ago, but now I'm worried that it might be a little too erotic for some of our family members. What happened between then and now? Huh? Like, what made you change, you know? Because at one point in your life you were okay with that. You're like, this is fine.

And now you're like, no oh it's too erotic i saw this song on spotify and i was like oh yeah and i added it to the playlist and i listened to it there's a lot of sexual references it is a highly sexual it is a very sexualized sexual charged song and it's even that bass line that it's like oh my god that sounds like two people bumping it. I don't remember the lyrics, but it's basically a reading of Equus, right? The chorus is, if you're horny, let's do it. Ride it, my pony, my saddle's waiting. Come and jump on it. I think I see what he's saying.

If we're gonna get nasty, baby, first we'll show and tell. Till I reach your ponytail, lurk all over and through you, baby, until I reach your stream. You'll be on my jockey team. So a lot of, basically a lot of equine double entendre. Not even delicate, I would say. I think it's fair to say. Not particularly delicate equ I would say. I think it's fair to say. Not particularly delicate equine references either. Guys, whatever happened to that word?

Do you remember that word horny? Like, remember when that was an okay word to use? And people were like, whatever, me so horny. And you just threw it in. Yeah, you could just say it out loud. When did we get so prude? Well, I mean, there hasn't been a good Mike Myers movie released in a while. My name is Justin McElroy, and I know the best thing of the week.

My name is Griffin McElroy, and I know 10 pretty good things this week. My name is Christopher Plant, and I know.5 of the things this week. Together we know 11.5 things between the three of us. There's a lot of things. This is 11.5. Yeah, here it is. This is the besties where we talk about the latest in news, culture, entertainment, sports, management tips,

and everything else in between. Management tips of businesses or sports management? Yes. But today we're going to focus on video games. They're blowing up. They're blowing up. A lot of interesting games.

Are you talking about just Pac-Man? They're not just Pac-Man anymore. Interesting. Things have come a long way since Pac-Man. Remember this? I guess I done fell off right after Pac-Man. Do you hear that knocking sound? On my end?

What's that? That's my fucking cat. When I don't let him outside, he literally knocks on the ground. Makes me think there's somebody trying to break into my house. So this is the besties. And do you guys want to get it popping or pop and lock? Yeah, can I kick it off?

Because my thing is just sad, and I want to get it out of the way. It's double sad, because I remember when you were in the beginning stages of this game, you were emailing, you were furiously texting me like, he's back, the blue bomber. You know what I did? I did that in a football. This is a football analogy. When the football guy, he catches the football, right?

And then like three yards before the touchdown zone. The receptionist, I think is what they're called. He drops the ball and he starts dancing and people are like, no, you're not in the touchdown the receptionist i think sure yeah he drops the ball and he starts dancing and people are like no you're not in the touchdown zone yet and he's like what and then he gets just nailed only in this instance you make it sound like he made this mistake at like the 50 yard line he's like i've done crossed it like you actually are only halfway there it's more like he caught the punt and then he was like great, and then he just set the ball down. So there's this game called Sonic Lost Worlds,

and if you have not jumped on this Sonic cycle, it's a lot like all the other ones where... Where are we at on the grand wheel? On the great wheel of Sonic? Yes. There's no place. It's just a more... Where can you ever be on it but sad

yeah you know like that's the that there's the illusion of happiness but reality is deep inside oh you're just rotting away you're spinning towards mortality uh so that's that's that game tell me tell me your experience in chronological order, because you really were like, here he is, the guy I remember. Let's go through the cycle. So the Wii U doesn't have any good games, but Sega's like, hey, we got a new Sonic game. It's like Mario Galaxy. We're working with Nintendo on it.

And I'm like, no way, he's coming back. And Sega's like, you're right, he is. And here's some screenshots to prove it. And I'm like, damn, that looks slick. Is this Wii? You played it on Wii U? Yeah, yeah. So then I email Arthur, and I'm like, Arthur, Arthur from Darfur, I need this game.

I want to review this game. And he's like, no, you don't, Chris. And I'm like, yes, I do. Don't tell me what to do, Arthur. And he's like, okay, here it is. So I get the game, right? And I put it in and i play one level and then i immediately begin my victory tour i sign on to campfire i tell everyone that

this is the we use killer app i start texting my friends my childhood friends i'm like guys remember when we played sonic the game is back you better buy a wii u now because they're not you texted you texted jaleel white you're like get ready for your career to fucking guys, remember when we played Sonic? The game is back. You better buy a Wii U now because they're not going to store shelves. You texted Jaleel White. You're like, get ready for your career to fucking ex-apolo to my man. Dude, you know who the modern voice of Sonic is? It's the guy who does Batman in that new Batman game.

Jaleel White? Sure, yeah. Pray to me. Where's Falcone? Chili dogs. Okay, so now I've already told everyone how great the game is. So I'm like, okay, I guess I should go back and play more of this game because it's so good.

So then I play another level. This precautionary tale is exactly why we finish the games that we review. Yeah, we don't just do one level. I play the next level and it's 2d and i'm like 2d great i didn't know there were going to be 2d levels in this i love 2d sonic and then i'm immediately like wait a minute this is not fun uh and i'm like no that's just you know they just had to put that level there because they needed to get rid of it put it early you know get it out of the way and what I realize is that is the second best level in the game.

It just keeps going downhill from there to the point of absurdity where, you know this thing that you do in video games like with a boss battle, right? Yeah. Where you're like, hey, we need to show people how to beat this boss. So you add like glowing weak spot or flashing red or something like that. What they decided to do was not that. They just don't tell you how to beat things. And then they kind of will give you something that is like a hint of like, hey, look at this guy.

He's about to fall. You should probably jump on him. And then you'll do that, and it's like got you instant death. Great. It's one of those tricks. And that's the entire second half. The language of games. Yep.

The final boss, I'm just going to spoil it because you should not have to go through this. And if you do make it to it, I'm helping you because I'm explaining how to beat it. The final boss, you just are jumping up a 2D environment, right? And you're like, this is great. I'll just keep doing this until it lets me hit this guy. And then you get to the ceiling and you die. Oh, no. Do you want to know the trick for how you kill it?

Yeah. So when you're climbing up, there are certain blocks that you can jump through. And logically, you would think, oh, these are to kind of hinder my way up this environment. Wrong. You're supposed to not break them going up, which is a real treat, and then wait for the giant bad guy to get right beneath them and then jump

on the blocks that you normally break with your head by jumping up. You want to jump down on them now, which you've never done earlier in the game. And you do this like 15 times and you pray that you do it before you reach the ceiling and die. Sounds pretty good.

Yeah. It's intuitive. And by intuitive, I mean like you want to put a gun in Sonic. What happened? Why did they? How did they make it good at the beginning and then shitty at the end? Is it just a level design thing? What happened?

I have a theory about all Sonic games and it goes like this. They take their budget, right? And they go, here is 75% of the budget. Hey, first level team, here is 75% of the budget. Do with it what you want. And make a great first level. And we'll use it for all the demos. And then, with the other, whatever remains of the budget, maybe it's just scraps, you know.

They give that to like the b team and then they have to laugh and then they lock them in their windowless basement and they say get it done in two months and they say that's not possible or kill your family get it done my point is you shouldn't play it and oh why did i say it was the best oh it was the best first level so there you go okay let me bounce this important survey off you what was the last good sonic game okay it was the best first level. So there you go. Okay. Let me bounce this important survey off you. What was the last good Sonic game? Okay. It was the one before this.

Sonic Generations and Sonic Colors are okay games. They're not bad. Sonic Generations blows on ice. I had an E3 experience where I played Sonic Generations, some demo, and it was one of those levels where you're running downhill while a truck chases you from behind oh sure um and i died probably 300 000 times during the demo and i had a pretty good reason for that it's because i was running at a billion miles an hour towards the fucking camera yeah i would run into things that would appear like a fraction of a second

before, you know, they would pop on the screen and then I had a fraction of a second and jump over them because I was running towards the camera at goddamn light speed.

And one of my friends in the industry went up and played the demo after I did. And the PR handler for the demo talked shit about how shitty I was.

And said this last guy, Griffin, was super shitty at this Sonic game. And when my friend told me this, I wanted to go back to the booth and say, is it possible that I'm not shitty, but that there's never been a good Sonic game because this franchise fucking sucks? That there's never even the fucking

Genesis games? Why the fuck? Do you want me to play a platformer where everything is going by at a billion miles an hour? Jump on that! Oh, you missed it. Fuck. You fucked up. How come you didn't see that at 300,000 miles an hour, you fucking idiot? Why do people enjoy these fucking games? They're all terrible.

It's called... I call it the devil's deal, and here's how it works. There's two sides to the deal. The Sonic fans will buy all of the Sonic games when they come out, right? But in return, Sega has to make the Sonic games like old Sonic games. And old Sonic games suck, so they don't get new people to buy Sonic games. What was the best Sonic game?

What's the best Sonic game? There are no great ones. And I loved Sonic 1, 2, and 3 when I was a kid. And I go back and play them, and I recognize they're not great. They're miserable. They are miserable, miserable experiences. They are a game. It's a rare, rare type of game.

It has a rare shitty quality where no matter what, you feel like you're playing it wrong. That is just perfect, just how I like it. The best Sonic game, by the way, is Sonic Adventure for the Dreamcast. Sonic Colors is the best. Sonic Colors is pretty good. It's pretty good. I just don't fucking get it, man. You know what the best sonic colors is pretty good it's pretty good i just don't fucking get it no you know what you know what the best sonic game is no joke sonic racing

transformed that game is excellent that's because it's a racing game i from a design standpoint it makes sense it it yes because because it's almost like the regular old sonic games are almost like a racing platformer. It tries to build this sense of inertia and momentum, but then it multiplies it by a thousand, and then you run into something, and either it kills you or it brings you to a dead stop. Hey, fun.

The idea of momentum is so important to platformers, and it seems like just because Sonic's got to go so fucking fast, they just can't get that shit right go play rayman legends like that's a game that makes you feel like you're going really really fast but you're still in control and you can see the shit you're supposed to navigate like i just don't get i've never enjoyed a sonic game except for sonic adventure because of the sonic adventure is pretty good the chow's or cow cows chaos chaos i believe chaos chaos yeah either way what was the one what for the we were you were it was all arabian knights theme that one was not awful sonic lost arabian knights i don't know i think it was that yeah i think that's oh no the secret of The Secret of the Lost Rings. Is that it?

Sonic versus Aladdin at the Arabian Olympic Games. Hey, guys. I'm sorry I got worked up back then, you guys. No, I want to thank you for helping me just work through that. And now let's never talk about it ever again. I don't understand why this is, like, their premiere franchise. Like, it doesn't make any sense to me at all. Justin, did you see what I did?

What else do you want them to have? I mean... Fucking release... Oh, you... Oh, don't get... Do you want to get this star? Do you want to like this wig? Yeah, Griffin.

There's no other Sega properties that people care about. Where's Phantasy Star? Where's Phantasy Star Online 2? Piss them. Oh, is that what you were going to say? I didn't think that. Yeah, dog. I thought no other Sega properties that people care about. Where's Phantasy Star Online 2? Oh, is that what you were going to say? Yeah, dog. I thought you were going to say Shinmue. Where is Shinmue? What are you guys doing?

Release Shinmue for Vita. There has never been a device more perfectly suited for a game than Shenmue and the PlayStation Vita. Think about that shit. Think about it. Just think about it, Sega. We'll think about it.

We'll take it under advisement. Can you pass it on to Sega, please? I'll tell Sega, Griffin. Don't worry. I was at Sega's headquarters. We walked by it in Japan, in Tokyo. And I wanted to just kick in the door and be like, what are you doing?

How do you think that would have gone over? Probably not great. Right now, we're making a Sonic game. We're making a Sonic game. What are you doing? I love that because it's a Japanese company, you would have kicked open the door, and you'd have been like, what are you doing?

And they're like, we're making vacuum cleaners. This is floor two of Sega Sammy Corporations. Yeah. We have 20 floors of, do you want apartments? Because that's floor five. Um, can I talk about my thing?

Because it's a game that makes me nothing but happy as opposed to Sonic, which makes me nothing but a fuddled in. let me make a suggestion. Your game is really good and my game is okay.

Oh, you want to close it. Okay, let's hear yours then. Um, my thing is the best tutorial of the week uh and it belongs to how to survive i know i watched a trailer for that game that was so butt rock like i it just scared me right off do you know what i mean when i say that

uh yes i know exactly what you're what you're saying and yes i mean yes okay uh 505 games has done done it again they got a game out the door without they snuck past the castle guards and got their game out the door without anybody noticing now this one we did actually get emails about uh i just don't think we covered it so maybe this one's on us i don't know um but uh mar they released brothers with little to no fan fair which is one of my favorite games of the year they released marlo briggs and the mask of death which i talked about a few episodes ago and it's really cool and neat and i don't know why i hadn't heard of it and now there's how to survive um i looked at some gameplay videos by

the way of marlo briggs i'll watch some Plays on YouTube. I'm convinced that you're the only person that ever finished that game without running into some sort of crippling game-breaking bug. If you search that game's title on YouTube, it's like, well, I fell down a pit and now I can't get out. The end. The end of the game. How to Survive is a, I guess guess isometric somewhat open world

zombie survival game. You're thrown onto this island. Similar to Dead Island, you're scouring the island looking for any sort of resources

that you can find to strap together weapons. It gives you very little guidance in how to assemble certain things. So you'll see that you can combine two items, but it won't tell you what is going to happen. So if you like that sort of thing, it's pretty exciting. The basic combat is basically like sort of dual

stick uh you can it kind of look like uh that that housemarque game the uh detonation yeah yeah not a bad comparison you aim with the right stick and you actually have a reticle that zooms in uh and locks onto the target the longer you hover over, and depending on how good your aiming is and that kind of thing. Or you can just point a weapon, like a melee weapon at the enemy and press the right bumper to attack with that. So the basic flow is you find a short short tube and then later you find a pneumatic tank and then you find the handle from a harpoon gun and you say okay i'm going to combine all

these things and you got a gun that shoots nails and you have a lot of freedom as to like what things you can combine and you can uncombine them after you try it if so if it doesn't work out. How you like it. The resources aren't lost. But the thing that I. My favorite tutorial. Is. The game's title. Is based on a book. Called How to Survive.

By this Russian guy named Kovac. Who's in like welder's gear. And basically. Every chapter you find find will describe with like uh funny little diagrams uh how to survive on the island and it's something that could have been sort of boring and text boxy but instead of that they uh they have given it a lot of personality and the the the little diagrams and and you know uh dialogue they have written for it is really funny. He also pops up in loading screens. It actually quizzes you on the information in the survival guide.

Oh, that's fun. And if you get the answers right, you can get bonus XP. So that's pretty neat. It's just another one of those games that's really sort of under the radar and I had not experienced before now or heard anything about, or by experience I mean being aware of its existence in the universe. Yeah. But if you're into that sort of like the Dead Island

and you don't mind not having any sort of hand-holdy type stuff. Is there a nation, a nation state, type stuff is there is there a nation a nation state or a global region in which 505's games are celebrated and anticipated it's like maybe in like the czech republic like oh shit that new 505 jams dropping next tuesday i can't wait the thing is they've released a lot of good games especially that's what I'm saying. And I think that they just, like, I think that they're in part hindered because that's a terrible name for a game publisher. I mean, it's like, it's the pits. Well, there's 505 Games.

There's 343 Industries. There's 345 Games. Part of the problem is that the company they're a subsidiary of is not any better it's called Digital Bros S.P.A. no way I swear to god is the name of the

parent company 505 let's step up the original name of this podcast was Digital Bros S.P.A. I mean just recently they've released they did payday 2 they published that they uh published brothers a tale for two sons right like i mentioned um and and a lot of other marla briggs and and some of the others and now this um uh takedown if you heard about that one that's that's a 505 joint. So they're making strides

in releasing a lot of solid stuff. Yeah, they made IL2 Stramovic, which was a good dogfighting game. What is that, Naughty Bear? Is that what it was called? Naughty Bear, Trouble in Paradise? Panicking something? Yeah, that game was like,

it reminded me of those weird Dream, or not Dreamcast, like Sega Genesis games. Yeah, like Toy Soldiers? Yeah. What was it called? those weird dream or not dreamcast like sega genesis games uh like yeah like uh toy soldiers yeah what was it called they just released a lot of weird things yeah i had final fantasy oh yeah final fantasy 14 x2 uh did i mention terraria terraria terraria ports i mean i mass effect mass effect 2 mass effect 3 sure all the Mass Effect series? No. Not Mass Effect 1. They've made a really, I mean, they've made a lot of interesting strides, and they're a really interesting publisher.

I just don't, I think they need a slightly better identity before they can really get a foothold of like, oh, this is a 505 game. This is what that means. Let me lay this one on you. Give them a new, give their company a new title right now. Activision, right? Like, that sounds good. Digital Bros.

Yeah, I guess so. Just take your parent company. That's a way better name. Digital Bros? Are you kidding me? Like, that sounds good. Digital Bros. Just take your parent company. That's a way better name. Digital Bros? Are you kidding me? Yes, please. Let's take it to halftime. Let the whistles blow. Let's roll some beer commercials. Beyonce's gonna come out here and sing. And let's talk about

our lives and what's important to us as people and as friends. Okay. No, I don't know anything nothing's been happening guys i'm trying to get healthy i turned 28 this week so now i gotta get i gotta start building that body v i gotta put some muscle on my frame i gotta help what's your secret for the muscle so the muscle? So I'm doing this awful health DVD series called P25. It's like one of those things that you see late night on television where they're like, P25? P25?

No, T. Because it's hosted by Sean T. He doesn't have a last name. He has a letter and a period. And it's T period. He lost weight in his last name. His last name lost a few letters worth of weight lost all of it what can you impart some secrets because i have my wedding is in uh

like 42 days i would love to drop like well like 20 20 pounds by then here's the great thing about this dvd are you ready for it all you have to do is give 25 minutes of your day but small thing it's 25 minutes of excruciating pain uh because you're not allowed to stop you can't stop you gotta focus shanti says so you're doing it for him remember that and it's basically uh you're alternating either running in place and then jumping up and down for 25 straight minutes or running in place and doing push-ups for 25 minutes. This sounds miserable. That sounds really bad.

It sounds like when I used to Bob Harper. Because I watched Bob Harper on The Biggest Loser, and he looks like a real fun guy that I maybe would want to be friends with. Like, he was my neighbor. Like, I'd want to hang out with him pretty much all the time. So Rachel loaned me one of his DVDs, and I was like, Yeah,per i'll give it a shot and he beat me into the fucking ground he beat the shit out of me um in a way that i still haven't recovered from this was in february i think and i'm still a little bit out of breath is that the p90x or is that the that's the biggest loser guy

right that's the biggest loser guy p90x guy i don't even know it that's too biggest loser guy, right? That's the biggest loser guy. P90X guy, I don't even know what his fucking deal is. That's too much. I mean, the good thing about this is I could still do it. At the end of it, I feel exhausted and kind of re-energized. I'll give it credit. But those other things, like this guy, Sean T., period,

has a thing called Insanity that they show commercials for afterwards. And it's basically like, hey, is T25 too easy for you you should do insanity it's an hour of push-ups yeah it's like oh great i need to buy that bbd is insanity muscle confusion is that what's happening there yeah it's basically just to break you down so that when you look in the mirror you just imagine you see what you want to i think any kind of exercise uh-huh anytime i put my body out um it's it's confused it is thoroughly confused when i have to like i when i lived in chicago i would like run upstairs from

time to time to like catch a subway because they come very infrequently and every time i did that my muscles would be so utterly confused they i would sit down on the train and my leg muscles would be like uh what was that uh excuse uh excuse me we have a good thing going like i will walk for you from time to time but i didn't know that that was part of the arrangement. Stupid leg muscles. Do you guys want to hear about the best, what did I say? Oh, best endings of a game. Yes. So I've been on a really nice steam kick lately.

Played me some Gone Home, which is half off, I think, still by the time you hear this. I feel a little bit guilty that I waited until it was half off to play it. But I'm thrifty, you know, and man, what a tremendous little game. It's already half off? Yeah. Well, it's just for like a week long sale thing. But the game I want to talk about is the Stanley Parable, which is the new version of a source mod of the same name that came out a few years ago um and i want to be delicate in talking about it because i feel like a lot of its virtues

come from uh the discovery and experimentation that you go through while you actually play the game do you mind if we just put something right here like if you haven't played the game and you haven't you're gonna play the game and you i would just walk away entirely like walk away right now it's been great talking to you guys this week polygon.com youtube.com make sure you check it out because shouldn't the world's best friends do the world's mission okay um uh no you're right if you want to go into the game i would say similar to gone home like just just go play it don't listen to this go go get it it's on sale i think still also a few bucks off uh like 20 off for its celebrating its launch

it's really good so if you're still with us um i i would say the basic premise of the game is it is a kind of it's very funny it's very humorous uh it's not ironic at all which i really appreciated at no point did i feel like the game was being pretentious even though it was covering some pretty heady um ground uh it is sort of about the and again this is entirely up for interpretation. Like the futility of the illusion of choice in games. It's all about does it really matter when choices are afforded to you in games when ultimately the choices you're picking are just options on a menu that were devised by by the developers um and the way that it gets that message across is by offering you constant choices whether they are clear and binary

like you have two doors that you can go through which one do you go through uh or whether they're more um sort of a dynamic like there's a narrator throughout the entire game who is amazing it beats i would say it beats bastion for best narrator of of games um that just narrates the action some as you're doing it or sometimes before you're doing it so you can go against their wishes and so that might come down to you know him saying you went through the left door and then you go through the right door and then this the story and the narrator sort of shift around you in that moment or maybe it's just he says you walk out of a room and you don't walk out of the room you just sort of walk around the room you just chill there and hang out there and then again

the story and narrator sort of shifts around you um so as you can imagine, there's a lot of different ways that the story can go depending on your actions, how you follow direction, how you defy the narration. And there are dozens of different endings that you can come to based on those decisions. And a playthrough of the game is going to last you maybe 10 minutes

um but there are so many different playthroughs to go through um that that there is a lot lot lot to explore and discover and what a playthrough even means kind of changes yeah it it sort of takes that the recursive nature of how the game operates and sometimes it like acknowledges that you it never lets you forget the fact that you're playing a video game uh which a lot of games break that fourth wall and very few do it uh without being super heavy-handed about it it like for instance if you just follow the narrator's directions the entire time you'll make it to the ending right

I would say that that is the narrative ending of that game but then there are so many different ways that you can throw monkey wrenches into the works it also sort of encourages you to try and break the game like I don't want to give it away because it's like one of my favorite things that happened but there is a way

to find a way out of the environment to like clip through the level um and you think you're so smart because you broke the game but they saw that coming too like that that's that is sort of the the whole story of the game is that the developer of this game that you're playing knows everything and they plan for everything you can possibly do so like it's not really your story it's a really interesting it's an interesting subject to like people who are disappointed in mass effect three's ending it it takes that concept of like your choices really don't fucking matter no matter what and makes it the entire narrative premise of of the game what's so crazy about it to me is you know that you're you're being i don't know manipulated almost by this narrator that this is very much not a person this is like pre-recorded

thing that knows everything you're going to do but when i did think i broke the game it was so jarring to hear him be like oh no no i'm still here you've you are a moron essentially like yeah and and i was prepared for this from the very beginning. And it just so clearly knows what people want to do when they come into a video game like this and totally uses it against them to say something. I think that's why it doesn't feel so heavy-handed is because it basically challenges you to attack it. what's that thing in kung fu where it's like

you know let them use the force like use their own force against them sort of thing jiu-jitsu yeah yeah yeah it's like mental jiu-jitsu um yeah and and again like it's fucking hilarious. It is astoundingly funny. And weirdly, in some of them, it's sort of sad. Yeah. And sort of, I guess the, I mean, you could make the argument. Now, I'm not sure I would make this argument personally, but you could make the argument this is really a broader condemnation of just games as a whole. And I think that's sort of a cynical take on it.

But you will not – I would say that you will not read games' criticism that is a better criticism of games than this game is. Well, of this type of game, I think. Well, yeah. Right. Exactly. Yeah. Well, yeah, right, exactly. Yeah, I think the type of narrative game that is so popular right now is what this is, you know, a shot across the bow.

And it sort of points those things out to what they are. And really, you don't need this game to tell you what they are. They're choose-your-own-adventure books. Because no matter what, you are never going to have an agency over the video games that you play that was not already designed by someone else. You know what I mean? It's not like, of course, there's user-generated content shit

that, like, sure, that doesn't apply. But in any game, in any Mass Effect 3, even if it didn't have you know sort of the the red blue or green ending um it even if the story that you had felt like your own based on the hundreds of decisions you had made that was perfectly tailored for you it's just that it's tailored like you didn't make it someone else made it and you lived it out and that is sort of the in the entirety of what the stanley parable is is all about yeah um but man is it fucking funny though did you guys find the achievement that he um that there's an achievement listed in the steam

listing so it's not it's not a spoiler there's an achievement called i think it's like click door 435 times that's the title of the achievement and so you try to do that in game and the narrator is like that's way too easy for an achievement so he leads you on this like goose chase throughout the office telling you to just click on all these different random items and it takes like 20 minutes to just like on all these different random items. And it takes, like, 20 minutes to just, like, go from door to door clicking on the right things. And the whole time he's getting more excited and more excited, like, yeah, now that deserves an achievement.

Like, it's so... Some of the humor is just, like, really funny writing. Some of it is, like, so clever and meta without being a dick about it that you just, like, can't help but laugh. Especially if you can get the art game ending god damn i think we posted it which if i had known the significance of the art game ending i would have made sure that we didn't post it um it involves i won't spoil it but it involves you to repeat this one action over and over again for four straight hours.

Nobody should do that, by the way. Just go watch the video on Polygon. Oh, God, it's so good. So, yeah, this is Stanley Parable. Oh, play the demo. The demo is cut not from the game. It is its own standalone little thing. And, like, it has basically all of the same elements of the stanley parable

it has a hallway museum showing off some of the great demos throughout gaming history it's so fucking good and it's free and and if if that doesn't sell you on playing the full game i don't you're you're dead inside i'm excited to play it. I've played two versions before. I played the original, what is it, version? The one that was the Half-Life 2 mod? Yeah. And then I played the IGF build, which I have no idea if there's any major differences

between this and that, but there was some absolutely insane stuff in that one. That's really good, man. Guys, there are so many good games. Do you remember when it was like... There are so many good games. You games you could just be like oh there's a new indie game out finally this month oh thank goodness now it's like every week there is something i need to be playing uh that that this week uh that should be candy box 2 by the way everybody candy box 2 is live and we'll talk about it next week.

We'll talk about it next week. Got to talk about it. Put some comments and questions because we'll hit it. We'll hit it hard. Can I do a live stream of Candy Box? Can you imagine anything worse? Guys, I have a question before we wrap up. Just to tease you, this Candy Box is an open world RPG action adventureadventure dungeon crawler puzzle game

with a world map and everything. It is amazing. I have a question for you guys. I'm ready. So next Tuesday, I think all the games come out. Is that true? It's Battlefield, Batman, WB, AC4. All in the same week.

And then the week after that, it's Call of Duty. Why would you do that? Why would you not release any of those? And then the week after that, week after that, PS4. We're fucked, man. This is it. We are on the peak of this fucking rollercoaster of releases. Here it comes. Wee! And you won't want to misscoaster of releases. Here it comes. Wee!

And you won't want to miss a second of that, so make sure you join us again. We're on Polygon.com until then, posting about all this good stuff, and you won't want to miss that either. So we'll see you next Friday for the besties, because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best things?

Besties!