The Besties - The Besties 78: Our fondest memories of the generation

Episode Date: November 9, 2013

To send off the current generation of consoles, we decided to do something a little special. There are no winners or losers this week, just our fondest memories from one of gaming's longest console cycles. I had a nice time recording this episode. Like Justin and Griffin, I started covering games professionally during this generation. I can plot my entire career alongside its big releases, studio openings, studio closures, small conferences, big conferences and comic conferences. When the Xbox 360 came out, I was still in college. That's strange to think about. Share a few of your best memories from this generation in the comments. Let's have an old-fashioned reminiscence. 4:00 - Watching Nintendo reveal the Wii 13:15 - Being an early adopter of Rock Band 25:00 - Halftime - Call of Duty: Ghosts 37:00 - Finishing Portal 2 42:00 - Playing through Oblivion with the McElroy clan 1:01:00 - 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!

I always look forward to the launch of a new Call of Duty, like it's like a perennial event in my gaming life. Like I look forward to the middle of November and playing this Call of Duty game. It rarely lasts very long, but I get kind of a kick out of it that I don't really get for the rest of the year. Yeah, I guess that's like what Madden people think of like Madden every year. Yeah, yeah, and I'm, you know, I'm not proud of that fact, but I do it. But I'm hesitant to pick up Ghost because apparently it's dog butts. So I just played a little bit of Black Ops 2 to see if I even still have the taste for it. And it was

literally like 40 seconds before someone told me that I smoke dick. Well, you do. I don't even understand how that how physically that would work. Do you know what I mean? Unless you're talking about like artisanal dick smoking,

like you're making jerky or you're tanning it somehow. Oh, that might be it, actually. It might get a renaissance fair. Pretty much anything can be turned into something you smoke, right? So, I mean, really it's a matter of acquiring the dick and then hollowing it out.

Well, humans are like, what, like 98% water? I don't think we're, like, smokeable. I don't think, I think there's probably, maybe hair. No, you could dry it out. Sure. And then, like, cover it in a resin, a thick, surfy resin. Yeah.

Okay. Or you could just grind up the whole thing and just, like, smoke it like hashish. Oh, I didn't think about that. Would it have any kind of Hallucinogenic effect? I mean What if that's how you gained a man's power And maybe this was like

Maybe this guy was trying to help you This was the original plot of the Highlander For obvious reasons It hit the cutting room floor. My name is Justin McElroy, and I know the best thing of the week. My name is Griffin McElroy, and I know the best thing of the generation. Whoa. My name is Justin McElroy and I know the best thing of the week. My name is Griffin McElroy and I know the best thing of the generation. Whoa.

My name is Chris Proplant and I know the best thing that happened between October 21st, 1985 and today. My name is Russ Frosch and I know the best game of the week. Welcome to the besties where we talk about the latest and greatest In sports entertainment Sports entertainment, entertainment sports And esports But this week we're not talking about any of that We're going to talk about video games Is that not esports? No

I mean electronic sports like holograph Chess And cyber bikes Cyber bikes Still kind of a game though, isn't it? Tron Discs. Still game-like. Game-ish.

It's an electronic game. It's different. Okay. This week we're going to talk about our best, we're going to send this generation off in style. The next time we join you, believe it or not, we'll be like one day away from, or two days away from the new console generation. No, we'll be right upon it.

And like, will we even know, because I won't have a PlayStation 4 in my hot little hands. I won't be playing one until the day it comes out, until Friday. Justin, I think you're there too. I think you're part of the hoi polloi. Yeah, right. Plant and Fresh, I think, will be the only

ones elevated to to premiere status you will have seen us exhausted by 12 straight hours of playing god playstation 4 and i i'm so sorry that we are going to do that to you guys pray for polygon pray for polygon that's all i ask but we're not here to extol the virtues of this next generation of consoles no no we're here to talk about our uh favorite memories from this console generation I guess I'll kick it off okay all right yeah is that cool by you yeah I think so um so my my fondest memory uh and and I hope that we don't scare off everybody right here was the first time I saw the Wii console. That tech demo, do you remember that?

When they were like, hey, look at this piece of plastic. Oh my gosh, you can use it to play basketball with your television. I remember there was a very, there was a very quickly mounting, like it went from absolute horror to, holy shit, this is the future. It started like, oh my God,

they're making like a light gun only console? Like, we all thought it was just gonna be light gun games. Right. And then that's absolutely what it was. No, it was light gun, light gun plus. But it was such a positive memory for me because at the time i think that was when i was in london and i i didn't have a video game console with me and i had spent some time away from games and i just didn't feel that jazzed about it anymore um

and i saw this thing and i remember watching with my roommates at the time who also didn't play games at all, and them being absolutely amazed. It was like they were seeing a magician in real life, and they could not believe it. And I didn't work in games press yet, so I wasn't cynical about a press briefing. I was just like, oh, of course, this will work exactly as they say it will work. Why would they lie to me? This will be perfect this will be the future and just being totally totally shocked by it there was there was a very um there was a very forgiving gradient from like the announcement of the wii and then the release of the wii and i i actually i don't remember the

Wii announcement press conference. I remember a little bit and I remember sort of that slow realization. Was that when they announced that it was called the Wii? Oh, God. I think it was. I think it was Dolphin. Revolution. No, it was Revolution. Yeah, Revolution. Dolphin was GameCube. I don't know what came first,

the hardware or the name, but I feel like they delivered on a lot of those promises. not so much red steel but like um you know we we sports like that experience held up certainly one game the first party stuff uh excuse me it's five games uh but i feel like i feel like everybody was like sort of they felt like nintendo sort of achieved what they had done and even though they didn't iterate on it especially quickly like that was enough to sort of keep that system going for you know that system didn't have a price cut for three goddamn years it's amazing it did so well i remember like i don't remember the the announcement either it doesn't really ring any bells but i do

remember the first time when i actually played one it was at that e3 when they first showed it off and made it hands-on and it was like i think like the day before the night before e3 was going to open and they had a bunch of press like walk through their booth and i'm like watching people look like idiots and then i put my hands on it and within 10 seconds i'm like my mind was blown and i don't think i've had that sort of experience with a video game since then yeah because i can remember being at the connect behind closed doors when they let some people touch it after that very first one was project natal and like being pretty blown away by this idea of touching a gas pedal in the air with Burnout Paradise, which is one of the tech demos. Oh, manzies.

And being like, whoa. But then immediately crashing into a wall. And they're like, oh, don't worry. It's going to be totally fixed. This will work on every racing game. Don't worry. Don't worry. Don't worry.

And I didn't feel like we didn't need a lot of that don't worry stuff. It was like, yeah, this worked. It was a silent 30 seconds of awesome. And because it wasn't, like, for the time it was pretty groundbreaking. But, like, when seen through the scope of, like, even technological advances a year later, like, it's not, it wasn't really reaching for the stars. No, it was just a game design thing. That's all it was. It was, like, brilliant.

It was a game design thing, but they weren't trying to do a whole lot. It had a few gyroscopes, and it had the pointer and the IR sensor that was a little bit wonky from time to time, but I feel like they mostly fulfilled the promises that they made, which is why I think the Wii U has been so disappointing because I do remember that console's announcement

and that crazy reel they put up where like you put the game pad on the ground and you hit a golf ball off of it into your tv like fuck you you haven't done any of that shit you don't even come close it's so interesting with the with the um with the wii is that i think it really like we talked about we talk a lot about technology being disruptive. And I think that when you- That was the most disruptive technology that's ever, ever happened within a console generation.

If you look at how this console generation was set up, it looked initially like this would be the generation that was all about becoming a set-top box. And it would be about online gaming and it would be about set-top boxes. I think even set-top box and it would be about online gaming and it would be about set-top boxes i think even set-top box i think even set-top box i think was even a little bit too i i think the original was this shit's gonna be so powerful because it's got cell chips in it fuck you xbox you ain't got cell chips i only play cell chips because that's how hardcore a gamer i am and then

literally two years later it was like well fuck like they don't have chips and they're doing really really well yeah it just turned into this dragon that the the generation spent the rest of itself chasing like it it suddenly was caught off guard and i think it really derailed uh a lot of plans for like where where the 360 and ps3 would have evolved to yeah and probably forced them into some areas that they weren't prepared to explore. Because make no mistake about it, I mean, if there's no Wii, there's no PlayStation Move or Kinect. The weird thing – No question. Yeah, the weird thing about it for me is I feel like it really was a magic trick in the end.

Like, in that way that the weed didn't actually do the things that you thought it did it didn't really uh have motion controls that were doing these things they just designed the perfect piece of software for the limitations of this this thing that they had created i i would argue that that it got a lot more robust and a lot sort of closer to the original vision that everybody had for it when the plus attachment for it came out because

no console has ever had a better swan song than Skyward Sword was for the Wii. What? Stop it. You don't... No, because that sort of... Stop it. Really? Yeah, definitely. Stop it. You don't... No, because, like, that sort of... Yeah, definitely. God of War was the swan song on the PS2.

You don't think that's a good swan song? It's pretty good. But this, like, that promise of, like, you can fucking swing your sword and it'll move exactly how you move your arm in the real world. Brief segue. Do we all remember the Miyamoto demo when they were first showing that off on stage?

Yeah, because that was the absolute worst. That was a terrible, terrible, terrible E3 for them. I think if you look at this generation, like the real success stories, I think are the, obviously the Wii is the biggest story, but if you look at, I think, the biggest surprise the Wii is, is the biggest story, but if you, if you look at, I think the biggest surprise from this generation, it was the, the music game trend. And I think that it, both of

those are centered around, not around cutting edge technology, but around play experiences. And I think as we go into this next generation, I think Sony and Microsoft would do really well to remember that the things that captivate people and can really build the sort of like fervent demand and heat, our play experience. And play with others. That's the other thing that those two have in common. You guys are kind of chomping my flavor right now. That's a good segue. Oh, yeah. Go on.

My favorite experience. Are we done talking about the Wii? I had one memory that I just wanted to share before we leave the Wii yeah please um this is my my favorite experience with Nintendo and the Wii during this generation was being at the uh round table for the first uh old school Super Mario that released on the Wii and uh asking Miyamoto a personal question about his family life, which is a huge no-no, because he freaks out, and Nintendo freaks out, and everyone in the room goes silent, and you're not supposed to do it. Why did you ask him?

I don't know. It was something dumb. And so I don't get an answer. They literally just are like, okay, next question, and totally cold shoulder me. They literally just are like, okay, next question, and totally cold shoulder me. Then we go to play Mario, and I'm playing, and I'm playing with somebody else. Miyamoto walks up and takes the controller from the person that I'm playing with, and no joke, he runs over to my character in-game, picks him up,

throws me in a pit, and then laughs, and then does it again as if to make it clear that I was being thrown in the pit. You definitely got on his bad side. And then he walked away. That was it. That's a pretty great experience. So to keep this really fluid segue talking about music games going, my favorite experience from the current generation was sort of the rise of the peripheral based music game and i know that that guitar hero launched uh on playstation

2 and sort of kicked things off in that generation but i feel like it didn't really reach its full apex and boy howdy once it did it burned bright and fast like a dying star uh until rock band was released uh because some of my fondest gaming memories i think ever and i don't know that this will ever change is uh being an early adopter of rock band and rock band 2 and rock band 3 and having that be like no no kidding from from the launch of rock band 1 until maybe until I moved to Chicago in 2010, like something I played constantly every time my friends came over, like a few times a month,

having parties based around playing this game that like, I don't think there's been a game that has been deserving of that really since rock band um it it really is some of my favorite time i've ever spent gaming um and it was sort of the the first move that i had into this idea of of casual party friendly play yeah and it's interesting because i i definitely had that same connection to rock band in those games and it's interesting because you compare it to the wii and it's similar in the in that uh it is sort of again like a magic trick because it's like you're not obviously you're not playing guitar dude get with it you're not playing guitar but because of the timing

because of the like the way the controls felt and the way it synced up with the music, it switched that switch and your brain flipped where it felt like you and your friends were this legit band. They actually had musical talent. And that was awesome. The games were really good. I mean, none of this would have been possible, I think, if the games had been developed by another developer.

And you can take a look at whatever the fuck, Band Hero or Guitar Hero 7 or whichever. I think Band was, what was the first one that brought, like, the Activision drums and Rock Revolution, right? No, Christ, no. And Neversoft took over Guitar Hero, and there was definitely, like, a pretty significant drop. No, I know, but they did release a Rock a rock band s game i'm just trying to remember they definitely did band hero but i think there was a guitar hero four or five that you can play with drums or something yeah guitar hero four world tour i think it was um and it wasn't especially great it wasn't very good i i think the reason that Rock Band succeeded was because it took the stuff that you and your friends had already learned playing Guitar Hero.

So it had that familiarity into it. It had drums for people who wanted a little bit more challenge to the stuff that they already knew. And if you had, like, no fucking idea what you were doing at all, you can sing. Because, like, everybody can understand that. Everybody can grok the concept of karaoke. And then it wraps all that around in like a really well put together game with with great mechanics like the big rock finish from rock band three where like once you reach the end of the song everybody just has to like

lose their minds and then hit the one final note like that's fucking great so that's super clever stuff yeah that i don't i don't think any other developer would have been would have had the the cleverness to to design that way um there's also like all the character customization stuff you could do rock band 3's emblem editor was like my favorite thing ever you can put you can customize tattoos and then put them on your character wherever you want like it was just such a great it wasn't a cheap cash-in like so many attempts to capture the casual market were like they were fucking good games man yeah like cared about the music same that the back then was about the music yeah well and all those people were in real bands i

mean a lot of the harmonics team yeah musicians and i think a lot of that carried over too because i i i it didn't really set my world on fire as much as rock band did but those dance central games are the same way like it's not just stupid dancing like there's really really great mechanics and they evolved so um so brilliantly between between sequels because dance central 3 had shit like the make your own move like dance off challenges and the the freestyle flash card challenges like yeah it was really it was really smart as someone that doesn't play instruments at all i have always wondered so when you extend a note on like a guitar are you supposed to just slam on the whammy bar like

in all time all instances as hard as you possibly can, yeah, because it makes it sound better, and you get more star power that way. Got it. Okay. I think my favorite experience was I bought Rock Band with a couple friends. We camped out outside of Best Buy to get it at midnight, and then we found out that Walmart had started selling it at like 8 p.m. the previous day, so we just drove over to Walmart and got it and literally played it until the sun came up.

And we did that for probably a week straight, just like getting together, playing the game. And we were doing a, I was doing a college radio station show back then at I think it was like 11 o'clock at night to like three in the morning or something like that. And the week where we got Rock Band, I brought it in and we just played Rock Band over the air and had that be, like, the music that we were playing.

Hopefully you weren't good. Oh, God, we were so good. And I did Sabotage, and I forgot to censor myself, and I said fuck on the radio. No, how on the radio? No. Because I was trying to play guitar and sing at the same time or, like, show off. And I was like, I got this fucking thought. And as soon as I said it, I was like, oh, Jesus.

So did all 16 listeners write in? We got, yeah. Those Fines men are no joke for a public radio station. Public owns those airwaves. They don't want to hear you saying fucking on the air. Neither does the dean of the college. No, it's not a podcast. I can sing fucking all I want here.

My favorite Guitar Hero memory was going to an event before E3 one year. It was whenever the last Guitar Hero was, when the series was very clearly on its last legs. And Activision rented out the entire Nokia theater. And it was like maybe 20 people in it, which made it already super awkward. And five devs came out and played, like, six songs, a really long set, and the game just looked bad, and they kept playing, and they weren't especially good at their own game.

And they were like, okay, I know what this is. They're going to have, like, everyone else come up and, like, you know, see what it feels like to be on the Nokia stage. No. They shut down the stage and they're like, oh, what should we do? We have the venue for another two hours. And one of the people's like, well, I have a DVD. So they just played Zoolander for the next two hours.

Jesus Christ, no. And wasn't that a Judges Week thing where you were trapped there and couldn't leave because the buses? That's terrible. They ended up playing Zoolander. Actually, it was longer than two hours. It was four because they played Zoolander twice through because after Zoolander ended, we were

like, oh, what are we going to do now? I guess we could hit replay. It is funny the second time. I would be remiss if we let this segment go on without me mentioning my Dark Horse favorite rhythm game. And that was the DJ Hero series. Oh, that game was so good. It was so goddamn good.

Especially DJ Hero 2. I think the soundtrack I liked a lot better than the original. It had that fucking fix-up, Mookshot. Oh, my God. So many good jams. I listened to that soundtrack probably more than any other game soundtrack. But another really well-put... I think that was, what, Freestyle Games?

Which I don't think is no longer with us. Well, Activision gave up on that game so quickly that you could buy two turntables for $15 for, like, 15 bucks a week after that game. I should try and find it, because, man, I really, really like that game. It was one of those games where, like, you felt, even more so, I would say, than Rock Band, unless you're, like, messing with, like, expert pro drums or whatever, where you actually felt like, I'm mixing the shit out of these two songs. where you actually felt like I'm mixing the shit out of these two songs. And every opportunity you had to, like, freestyle, like, the track switcher, like, and you could make your own remix.

Like, ah, god damn, that shit was fresh. I have a special memory of DJ Hero because it's because of DJ Hero that an incident happened wherein I, Russell Frusht it, podcast fave, interviewed Jay-Z. It was me and Jay-Z in a room. I had no idea. Yeah. When I was working at MTV, MTV opens a lot of doors, and this one door opened, and there was Jay-Z. And I interviewed him for about five or ten minutes. How was it? And talked about video games. He was a super

nice dude. Was he a producer or anything on that? Yeah. He was attached in some ridiculous way. Activision was throwing, like, so many names on their games at that time. That was the time that, remember, they rented out the Staples Center because they had just Infinity Ward had fallen apart?

I remember that. So they threw, like, they just infinity warded fallen apart i remember that so they threw like they just you think that's you think that's why they threw that party like we're doing okay oh it was weird that was a weird thing that was where they didn't participate in e3 but they did that it was weird and that is that what is it 200 foot stripper pole remember when harmonix was making so much god damn money that they got the who to play a private show for them i showed up to that not knowing what it was and then they had a stage set up where you could play rock band like before the mystery artist went on and i did a set with a few other game industry folks. I think Kyle Orland was among them. And we did, I don't know, I think I did Pump It Up.

I think that was my go-to usually for rock band. And then afterwards, we went into the theater and the fucking Who came out and it dawned on me retroactively, it's like, wait a minute. I opened for the Who. Think about it. Technically speaking.

I remember you were in the joystick chat room with all of us, like on your computer when the show started. You're like, who's the mystery guest? You're like, the Who, gotta go! And you just like disappeared. Dip! Lovely memories. So who's been playing...

You guys remember Tony Hawk Ride? Oh my gosh. I don't want to talk about it. I can tell you about having to play Tony Hawk Ride in front of Tony Hawk and him being like, it's much easier than you know, than you're behaving. It shouldn't be this hard.

No, it shouldn't, Tony. You're right, Tony. It shouldn't. Correct, Tony. I bet it seems that way to you, Tony. Yeah, I'm sorry I can't do a 900 kickflip, Tony. Activision trotted around a small child to play that game in New York. I went to a press event, and there was a seven-year-old kid playing Tony Hawk's Ride. And they had us watch him play it. And then at the end of it, I was like, I like half applauded because I didn't know what else to do.

And he was like, yeah, I really kicked its butt, right? Half time. You guys, who's playing Call of Duty? I've played that whole thing. All of it. Every little bit. Let me tell you how far I got. What I did was I was in a spaceship,

and I was killing people in zero gravity, and then I was back on Earth. Sounds pretty tight. Got blown up with an earthquake weapon. Yeah. And then I was in a dilapidated post-apocalyptic nightmare escape. And there were dudes everywhere. And they were shooting at me.

And I was shooting at them. And I got through. I did maybe two minutes of that. I thought, all right, I'm good. Justin, we had a conversation about this before you went and played it, and I told you that you probably shouldn't because you'd sort of feel bad afterwards. Yeah, I got as far as I could. I mean, I got through all the Black Ops' story.

It's baffling to me. If you're going to make what is—this is is not relevant to the point i'm sure we want to talk about the game itself more but if you are gonna if you have like a the blank slate of basically just making a game where you're shooting people and you know that it's like basically the most well-trod game territory uh uh of the decade uh like why wouldn't you make your hero like something internet like why wouldn't why wouldn't you have like a minority of some sort or like a speech impediment or a really well you don't know you might be a minority with a speech impediment because he never talks well i see his brother and his brother is a uh like the bro-iest white bro dude named Hesh ever.

Hesh. Hesh. Yeah. Maybe you're right. Maybe like that's the twist at the end. I should wait for. And the camera pulls back. By the way,

you're adopted. By the way, this whole time you've been a beautiful black lesbian. I love you sis. I love you sis. You're my hero. I want to, I want to share a moment that i had because so i

reviewed the game and you can read my review on polygon.com um the moment that sort of blew me away and and told me okay they've officially run out of ideas is well there's two moments one of them happens very late in the game do you think i should i like do a spoiler warning yeah i don't care if the game is dog shit like Like we still shouldn't spoil it. Okay, this is more in the middle and people are aware that this level, because it's in all the trailers,

there's a level that takes place. It's scuba diving. You're scuba diving. Oh yeah, they used it for the E3 demo. Yeah, they used it for the E3 demo. And the E3 demo

was mercifully cut short. At least they cropped a chunk of it. You spend, no joke, 20 minutes floating around as other guys in scuba gear drop down from the surface of the water and shoot you with underwater machine guns. Have these fucks not seen Mythbusters? That's a good point. Well, they're underwater because it's the future.

So that's pretty clear. No, I'm saying the bullets. Oh, yeah. Well, the bullets are underwater bullets. It's just like disintegrate when you shoot them underwater. Well, I mean, Griffin, did you miss the part where I said I was shooting dudes in a space? Like, you guys are in the beautiful majesty of space and I'm weightless. And you still couldn't make a game for five minutes.

It's like a person with Tourette's Syndrome or something. He's got to be shooting somebody right like can you not think of any other meaningful mechanical interaction with this world than like me putting a bullet in a fool and like call of duty you're not gonna like it's not like mark echo's getting up like you're not gonna like do some fucking spray paint on the moon or some shit like you're gonna shoot some dudes no but i'm gonna give you an example of a scene where they didn't do that, which was in Black Ops 1, where you walk into the, like, Pentagon,

and you walk into an office, and fucking JFK's right there, and you're, like, meeting JFK, and that was an amazing moment. And there was no shooting in that moment. Boosh. What, like, drives me crazy about this series, and it happens with,ision properties that are successful, is they become wildly popular. And then it's like, that's not enough. And they're like, how can we make it even more broad?

And they find something even more generic, like, let's put it in an apocalyptic setting. Our market research says that would get us this many more million people and then it just gets dumber and like just planter i mean it's it is it is beef cooked well done let's let us let's get off the campaign because nobody gives a fuck about that anyway okay i think my my biggest disappointment is, they got rid of the pick-ten system, which is the best system of that type for a shooter, I think, hands down. Yeah, I mean, I would say that they didn't get rid of it so much as heavily alter it, for the worse. Because I just picked up Black Ops 2 to wet my palate a little bit, and immediately I jumped right back into that system. Immediately. I haven't played it for a fucking year and i picked it up like oh yeah i remember how this

works and i put together a new class and like it's so easy and so like deep and there's so many options and it sounds like they've just like complicated it to a crazy extreme yeah there are there are still i would say it's still very deep and there's still a ton of options but it's like imagine because it's not hard to imagine because you literally do it the second you try to create a character imagine staring at a screen with 35 different perks on it each with their own point values and trying to figure out okay i have seven points to spend i'm gonna do a two point plus a three point plus a two point and like why like they just over complicated the whole thing um i think also i i

and i haven't heard that many people talk about it um i i was really looking forward to the squad system because i like a good bot based multiplayer experience one of my favorite i think shooting experiences of this generation was uh the rainbow six vegas series and the terrorist hunt modes that they had i spent a lot of time playing those and i kind of had high hopes that squads would be that um for call of duty but but russ you make it sound like it's not actually not actually that shit hot yeah so they build this as like this new brand new huge huge aspect of the game and it's it's essentially like you can do bot matches do you like fighting against bots that's what i'm saying though i like bot matches like i like i i do like i like i like

that that rainbow six vegas terrorist hunt style game Okay, but that's not what I'm talking about. So I agree with you. There's a mode called, I think it's called Safeguards in Ghosts. And it's essentially like Spec Ops Survival, where they, like, float in and you have to kill all of them. And that's fine. That's not terrible. But it's been in other Call of Duty games before. But most of Squads is not that.

Most of Squads is, like, it's you plus nine bots versus ten bots just doing the normal modes of Call of Duty games before, but most of Squads is not that. Most of Squads is like it's you plus nine bots versus ten bots just doing the normal modes of Call of Duty. And it's not fun. Like, no one wants to play Call of Duty like that. Unless you do. Do you still get XP and shit like you would playing a normal game? Yeah, but it's

like less, I guess. It's just, like, does it matter? Do you think that's fun? Like XP? I like XP. I like experience It's just like, does it matter? Do you think that's fun? Like XP? I like XP. I like experience points. I like ranking. I like guns, and I like attachments, and I like ranks, and I like ranking through the ranks. I know people don't like it when you say

you don't like one of these games this year, and you like one of the other ones, but I've been hopping on that Battlefield 4 beat, and I've never gotten into Battlefield except for 1942. Oh my gosh. Is it good? Maybe I'm crazy, but I am like going nuts.

Like I'm addicted to it. It's so big. That's what I'm saying. I want a multiplayer shooting experience where I can unlock guns and ranks and ranks and ranks. And I've been playing without audio chat or voice chat. Yeah, because you have no friends on PC. Sure, but what I'm saying is it's very much a team-based game, which was like a change for me from Call of Duty.

And what was crazy was how easy it was to play and how a team dynamic naturally happened a lot of the time, even without voice, just because of the way the game is balanced. And if you're not really good at shooting people um there are a lot of things you can do to rank up that xp and kind of find a place for you like i had to use the rocket launcher a lot because i'm not good but people don't like trash talk you for it like if you're the rocket launcher guy you're incredibly valuable to your team because all the cover is destructible. So you become the person who basically is

like, blowing up the holes and making people vulnerable to the sharpshooters. Yeah, and there's also the what is it called? Shooting around people to slow them down. Suppressive fire. Yeah, you get rewards for... Missing, essentially. Yeah. Oh, man. Okay.

I'm gonna pre-order this shit. I've been thinking about either do I want Ghost, do I want BF4, do I want Killzone Shadowfall? I want some sort of multiplayer shooting. I think what I'm going to go off of having played Ghost, no part of me can recommend it. And it apparently has some

issues on PS4. PS4, I definitely ran into some framerate issues. Right now, my current plan, I haven't played Battlefield on pretty much any platform, but right now my current plan is to get Battlefield on Xbox One. And so I have that multiplayer game that will fill up my Call of Duty need. And I'm hoping the port is good.

I have no idea if it is or not, but I don't have a million-dollar PC that plays awesome PC games. How many Ps are there? Because I've heard a lot of things about Xbox One not having many Ps. Yeah, it's usually a division. Oh, I believe... The Battlefield, I thought it had 1080p.

No, no, no, no, no. I think it's upscaled as well. Oh, wow. But I would say, here's the thing. I think it's 900 Ps. The game itself is fun. People freak out about it. Not only that.

But I don't give a fuck about fun. I just want the most... All the Ps. Ps. Like, if I know that someone else has more P's than I have then like what's the fucking point?

You should get into PC gaming. There's only one P in there. Oh gosh. But yeah just to give you an idea of the craziness I was

I'm more about the game so early on I played the game called Don't Get Killed which was just to stay alive as long as I could. People got me in a helicopter because they could tell I was lost. I put me in a gunner thing, but I accidentally hit the button to jump out of the helicopter, and I happened to be over the enemy base. So I realized people were shooting at me, so I couldn't pull my parachute

until the very last second. But because I did that, it slung me directly into their building. So then I'm sprinting as people are shooting rockets at me and I see an elevator and I'm like no way, it's a video game that'll either be a load screen or inoperable, no the elevator actually works, it takes me to the top of the skyscraper and I start stabbing

fools who are sniping on top of that who doesn't love riding in elevators in video games it's great it's great when there's an elevator that is actually a real Who doesn't love riding in elevators in video games? It's great when there's an elevator that is actually a real elevator and not a lone screen. Let's get back to talking about memories. Okay. Although I'm glad we've settled this because I really was agonizing over what shooter I should be. You can be in my clan.

Yeah. Well, I'm getting on PS4, so I don't know if I'll have anybody to play. No, that's a dumb idea. Well, I'm not going to get in Xbox One for a while, I think. Oh, yeah, okay. Well, that's, okay, also dumb. Okay, moving on. I hesitated sharing this idea, this memory of mine,

because it's kind of bittersweet when I look back at it. It was bittersweet at the time and continues to be. And it's probably the best moment i had but also a depressing moment because i it's the moment when i finished portal 2 and i remember very clearly there's like i'm not gonna say what happens at the end because there's amazing things and if you haven't for some reason played what i would argue to be the best game of this generation you should damn well play it oh no but no. But the moment it ends and the music is playing over the credits,

all I can think of was, it will be a long fucking time before I play a game anywhere near this good. Like, maybe until the next Valve game. Who knows when that's going to be? And it was just, like like so expertly, like every aspect of it, from the game design to the writing, to the co-op

mode that I'm sure a lot of people never got around to playing, but it's equally amazing. It was just like this perfect representation of what games can be and when games really nail something. And for it to be in a sequel, like, games get a lot of

shit for like bullshit sequels like you know like ghost level like half-assed sequels but when a sequel comes out and trumps what was already a universally beloved game with on every level and not just from like a it has six more guns that was kind of a weird game to sequelize upon because and i know i'm getting into like bullshit gamer semantics now but like portal launched in the orange box a lot of people when it came out in orange box sort of thought of it as like this sort of weird appendage to the Half-Life games that were in that box. Almost like sort of like a mini game on the side, even though it was a lot, lot, lot more than that. Yeah, I don't think anyone bought the orange box for Portal.

No, I don't think so either. But I mean, it was incredibly short. I think I beat it like in two hours my first time through, which sort of backed up that that way of thinking. So like to say that this this game is a sequel to that, like it is it's so much bigger and the ideas are so much more fully realized and the puzzles are so much more clever in every single way that i don't know it's it's weird to say like it's like this thing but better like because of course it is it's almost like it's this thing but an an actual fully fledged game this time around yeah i would agree with that it definitely felt like it was the first game was more of an experiment uh an idea and this was this is what a game of this could look like.

Yeah. I actually, so I played Chris Plant. I played co-op with you. Yeah. I was really good at it. Debatable. But they were just amazing moments in the co-op that I don't think I've ever had in a game before or since. Where you're just, like, standing there.

You're a robot. Your friend's a robot. You're, like, both seeing're a robot your friends are robot you're like both seeing each other like look around these rooms and then these like you'll hear like the other person be like wait wait let me just try this thing and then they'll run off and do something crazy and then they'll like fly through the screen

and you have no idea what just happened and suddenly like everything will flip and you'll know exactly how to solve the puzzle. Like, there's a moment... Sorry. No, I think we're about to talk about the same thing. Yeah, probably.

You go, and we'll see. The air high-five. Yeah, the air high-five. Everybody remembers who played that game, who played the co-op mode, will remember this singular puzzle for the rest of their lives because of how fucking good it was and i i don't

i don't want to describe it in case in case people haven't played it yet but if you have like you know what i'm talking about i think you actually get an achievement for it called air five um it's it's so good and it realized so many different aspects of what the portal puzzle mechanic was sort of capable of. And it solidified it into this singular moment that when I played it with one of the guys that worked with the joystick, we just cracked up laughing. Like, holy shit, I can't believe

that was the solution to that puzzle. What I think is also so great about that multiplayer is a room can take you 15 or 20 minutes to solve. It's very tough. But once you know how to do it, it only takes a few seconds, which allows for you to troll your friends and not feel bad about it. We gave each other so much grief while playing that game, but the game doesn't make that a penalty.

It doesn't take lives. You don't really lose a ton of time doing it because it's something to do to kind of like stop thinking about the puzzles and like kind of it adds its own levity which is perfect because it's already a funny game um yeah that game is pretty I miss it. Me too. So here is my, weirdly my best memory of this generation is actually pretty early. The year would have been 2006, and I was working at a newspaper in the south of Ohio called the Ironton Tribune and wasn't writing about games. Uh, wasn't,

wasn't doing any of that. And, um, the, the, uh, it, as it happened sort of by happenstance,

I didn't have a three 60 yet. And, um, on the, uh, year anniversary of the day, uh and Mai's mom passed away, it was a year to the day, it was May 21st, 2006, we were all sitting around my apartment,

which was pretty close to the house at the time, and sort of spur of the moment decided that, you know what, we're going to go buy an Xbox 360. And we spent the rest of that day um playing with everything and and and goofing around on distracting ourselves and and and you know trying out whatever games we had lying around i think putting in xbox one game or original xbox games to see if they work and about uh two months after that i I was supposed to get married July 1st of 2006. And my wife and I were going to move out of our respective places and move into a new house together. And the month before the wedding, our lease expired at our old place so we decided that for that month

we would live separately until we moved in together so for a month between the month of June in 2006 which was right after I got the 360 I played

an amount of Elder scrolls oblivion uh with my with my with my brothers there uh i think we were swapping controller and and and each having our own campaign but that month we had like turned our dining room into uh basically just a just a cave where, uh, us three and our dad, like, were taking turns playing through Skyrim, or sorry, Oblivion, each of us with our own character, you know, our own approach to it, but for a month, I, we basically just locked ourselves in, in this, like, in this world. And it was, um, still kind of a weird transitional period for, for us as, as a family, I guess, uh, still kind of figuring things out. And it was right before I was sort of, you know, going to start this whole new thing,

but for a month we did nothing but play Oblivion. And, uh, I cite it pretty frequently as like my favorite game ever and I think it's because of that like for a month I was not able I was not only able to sort of lose myself in this huge vast world that absolutely would not have been possible on the previous generation of consoles but I was able to to sort of bond with them more over this game and each of us sort of watching each other and having our own individual experiences. And for me, when I'm thinking about video games now, it's really hard for anything else to stack up to that.

And because of that, that experience, I think, was what galvanized me to want to write about games professionally. And less than a year after that, I was at Joystick. So that's my favorite memory of this generation. I don't really remember that because I was like, at that period, I was too busy, like, getting girlfriends and kissing them. Yeah, getting babes. 2006 was like a really good year for me babe wise yeah you're right at your apex i i remember that and that that was like that was

we have all all four of us always played games together i think coming up maybe less now that we we live in different places but like and sometimes to to a negative degree uh i remembered still the screaming arguments that we had over everquest because either one of the four of us wanted to play and on the one computer and the like 56k modem or shittier modem that we were running at that time um or our mom wanted to make a phone call or something like that which was like would kick us right off um but that that that period i feel like there wasn't really any of that because that game and that series has always been so good about it really was a different game for all four of us so it could be this communal single player

experience where it's like travis would go through the game stealing every fucking thing that there that there was and dad would play as this huge conan the barbarian type motherfucker and like you were this this foppish enchanter that could solve solve puzzles with magic like i don't know there really aren't that many game franchises like that that i would like watch somebody else play dad dad was the worst because our dad would systematically pick up everything in a room like no matter how like how dumb or useless it was like if it was a fork he picked it up a plate he picked it up he picked up everything in the room and he would become incredibly encumbered and then insist on walking to the nearest shop to sell everything and you would have to watch him like fucking lumber the miles to the nearest shop to sell everything and you would have to watch him like fucking lumber

the miles to the nearest shop just so he could sell off and make whatever dumb copper that he was going to make from selling that person's vase i think part of it was also the magic of like like you said like that there there weren't that many games when it first launched that you were like, there's no way they could have done this on the original Xbox. But even Morrowind, like, didn't even come, didn't even fucking come close. Like, it was such a crazy marked improvement.

Man, now I want to play Skyrim again. God damn it. God damn your happy memories. That was nice. That was a really nice nice that was a nice story it was a nice episode i enjoyed that i'm like sad i'm like reminiscing about the generation now and i like had no emotional connection to it like an hour ago it's you know it's funny because i never i really it's hard for me to think outside of this generation because, for me at least, this has been my entire professional career.

I've only covered these consoles. And you get such a different relationship with video games when you start doing it professionally. And it really sort of changes your relationship in a really profound way um and and and it's weird for me to think about you know not covering these boxes because like this has been sort of my entire professional life has been this this generation it's also been different in like the way that i play games because the way i play games now is completely different from the way i was playing games in, what, fucking 2004? Like, nine years ago?

I would sit down in a room with my PlayStation and just poop sock all four discs of whatever Japanese role-playing game I was playing over the course of two weeks, and it would be literally all that I do. And, like, God, if that was the way that I played games in this current generation I would have fucking died because there's so many games like that like I could only play Skyrim for a couple hours at a time and then have to put it down but like if Skyrim had come out when I was 13 years old like that's all that I would have that is all that I would have done I don't know it's it's it's weird not only how things have changed since I started writing about them but just like i don't know it's it's it's weird not only how things have changed since i started writing about them but just like i don't know i'm getting married in a month like my gaming time is in the way that i consume them is less less fanatical i think oh that's exciting can i ask you guys an honest to god question because we're like i feel like we're in the honesty tree right

now here are you guys really like are you guys excited i mean are you guys really, like, are you guys excited? I mean, are you guys, like, super excited in the way that one would expect if, like, two video game consoles were coming out within about a week of each other? No. I am. But for a different reason. Wait, what a time. Let's go with Russ first, because he answered first.

Okay, so, I mean, I just talked about this on Friends List, but I'll reiterate. I mean, with both consoles, I mean, just on a software side, just in terms of the games that are coming out, it's not like there is literally nothing close to a must-have piece of software coming out on either of these consoles. The closest thing is, I would say, Titanfall on Xbox and Infamous on PS4. And neither of those come out until Q1 of next year. So on that aspect, no, I'm not losing my mind excited, but there is a lot of excitement that I get out of just drumming through.

It's weird, but just drumming through the menus and understanding the new features and just learning cool things you can do with these new consoles that I currently have no idea. I'm also super excited to never use the PS3 controller again. So there are aspects that I'm excited about.

Griff, what about you? Are you excited? Are you pumped? It's hard for me to have any kind of anything to compare it to. Because you just described my entry into the the current generation is when you bought that xbox 360 on a lark and until that point like i hadn't thought about doing it because like i don't think i had a job at that time or maybe i was working at tcby not like earning xbox 360 bucks um so like the prospect of buying a console at launch has never really been

a possibility for me save for when the wii launched i was working at gamestop and i had i had one reserved from the gamestop i was working at and like that was that was pretty exciting for me um but it's hard to compare that because it was it was such a sea change um i'm a little my expectations are tempered because of the software that's coming out. Because like Russ said, like there really isn't any first party stuff that's got me super psyched right now. But, um, I'm excited to have like new shit. Like I'm excited for it to be here and for me to put my hands on it, which I know is

a completely superficial reason to be excited to you know i'm looking forward to buying something but i mean it's kind of true that's kind of where my head's at and i think that's like i don't know i think that's just a general tech enthusiast thing more than it is a gamer thing yeah um i'm excited just because a refresh means that all these companies can kind of readjust their entire strategies to the way people play video games now like i think you know make it easier for indie games to be available to a larger group of people like learning from your mistakes and how you promote them uh but even things like how xbox wants to incorporate non-gaming stuff into the system, like fresh saw the split-screen thing where you can have the TV on.

This idea of, you know, Kinect actually being used as a communication device where I can have Skype video chat on while playing a video game, which I don't even know if that's a real thing, but I'm just saying. You can't do that. You can't do that. You can just do voice Skype while playing a video game. But I'm excited to see how things evolve over the course of this generation and how I can live my life as an adult and incorporate games into my life

in maybe a healthier way or a way that is more communicative with people that I want to be talking with while playing games. I think just that's what I'm most excited about, is to see the new ways we play games this generation. Because we don't know what that is, right? We don't know what the Rock Band is, or the Dance Central is, or what the big thing is yet, because it's just so early on. I think it's going to be a first-person shooter. Yeah. The good thing is, I think that is kind of running its course more than I thought it would. I think we are about to see something new.

Yeah, I would love to see something new. So, yeah, I'm happy just because I think it's a chance for people to try new things. And all the new IPs that all the publishers are working on that's i think that's what's exciting justin what about you um i i think i'm i'm probably closest to russ on the spectrum actually i'm weirdly like uh it's kind of throwing me how close they're coming out together i almost wish they were spaced out a little bit because i uh the it almost feels like an embarrassment of riches. Like I won't really be able to dig into either one enough.

I do think it's a really big missed opportunity to, and maybe they had this, so it's hard to say in hindsight, but it's weird that with as much lead up as they had to this console, as much of a runway they had to these consoles, there isn't like a big launch game that you have to own and i know that that's you know that's part of the course though it is part of the course but i'm saying like as long as we had to wait for this generation it seems weird that and as much as these two are going to be in direct competition with each other in a way that we we haven't seen before um it's it's it's weird that one of them didn't want to come out with something huge you know you had to have it's

a business strategy more than anything right because they don't need i mean it helps but they don't need infamous and titanfall to come out this year to be to be to sell all the units that are going to be on the shelf yeah they're going to sell they're going to sell all the units that they put on the shelves for the holiday season because that's how holidays work. And typically you hit that lull right around January. And so they have a game coming in February and a game coming in March that's going to keep things going.

And then hopefully in the summer months they'll be able to keep it going. But you look at the Wii U, the Wii U sold 3 million units from its launch to the end of the year in like a month and a half, which is crazy good. And then nothing fucking came out for like seven months and yeah that's fair i guess you want to you don't want to sink a lot of resources into a game when the install base isn't there yet i mean they're going to sell a lot more the install base for titanfall for example is going to be a hell of a lot bigger um you know in march than it will be more importantly though it's going to keep

nintendo has only sold i don't even think they've sold an extra million on top of the three million they sold in the first month and a half because of how slow the the software lineup was was coming out and now they have this like three or four month booster shot to like keep shit keep shit rolling i think next spring is going to be pretty dope because by that time we'll have those games we'll have more indie game adoption uh fucking octodad will be out you know i'm gonna be on top of that shit yeah i think next spring is going to be a lot healthier time to pick up one of these things um but i'm excited to be an early adopter because i haven't had that in a long time the only thing weird with the indie thing is it is so strange seeing all these games out on PC or out first on PC for the PlayStation.

And they don't run on super powerful things either. So that's the only thing that kind of bums me out about my PS4. I was very excited about it at E3, and now i'm just kind of like well i played a lot of this stuff or oh but it's not that's not everything though that's not like octodad and hell jumpers like those games are those games are exclusives no and i i don't think octodad is i'm pretty sure it's pc and i'm pretty sure it's designed for pc and i think it's designed to be on PC. Like, the better controls are PC, too, I think.

Maybe that was a long time ago. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Did you say PC, too? Do you know something I don't? Oh, no! I'm so sorry! This is the embargo break. You're not supposed to talk about the PC, too, yet.

I just remember a long time ago when they were like, yeah, this game was made for PC. Yeah, I think I was wrong, yeah. But, I mean, Housemarque's games, like Resogun, there's definitely some games like that. For sure. Contrast coming to PC, too? Yeah, I believe so. And let's just hang out in the sad realization

that Microsoft and Sony might think that Rise and Killzone are these games. Like, oh, man, let that one at that one i haven't played the rest of kill zone that multiplayer is actually pretty fun guys do you know what makes me happy though is i know that we already trashed shooters at the end of that thing titanfall is the real deal that game man that rise is without question the worst demo of a major game I've ever played at a press conference. Titanfall is so damn cool. I know we are like wandering way off the fucking track right now.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Did I ever talk about my experience playing that game at the Tokyo Game Show? Because it's really quite magical. I would love to hear this. I don't think so. Yeah, tell me. It was the first time I played the game. Like every time I go to events,

I very rarely indulge myself in like seeing shit that I want to see that I'm not, like, on the books to see that I don't, like, have scheduled appointments for. Usually I just go see the shit I'm scheduled to see, and then I go back to the hotel and write it up as quick as I possibly can because I'm, you know, a hard, diligent worker. But at the Tokyo Game Show, I was like, fuck it. I'm going to see Titanfall. I don't care how long I have to wait, which is good because I had to wait like an hour and a half, don't tell Brian, in line to play it. And so I waited an hour and a half, and I finally got to play it.

I was like, here we fucking go. Titanfall time, baby. And the group of Japanese businessmen I was playing with on my team didn't know that you could summon mechs from the sky to climb inside and fight alongside at your will. I was the only person who exercised that particular option. So this 15 minute demo that I just watched everybody else play lasted maybe four and a half minutes for me because our team got fucking shat-racked. It was brutal.

And then at the end of every match, you have this opportunity to escape if you lose, where you have to get to this helicopter before you get fucking murked. And they were just standing around. I was like, come on, guys. We have to get to the chopper. Fucking follow me.

You didn't learn Japanese for get to the chopper? They were just getting stepped on. I was just going, hajimemashite, which means nice to meet you. Because that's the only thing I do. This has been the besties where we said goodbye to this console generation. Next week, we'll be in a sort of a bizarre state of flux as we, you know, prepare for the next generation. But we'll be on the cusp. We'll be on the very edge of it.

I still don't know what I'm going to get with my PS4. Get Battlefield 4. Let's get dirty with it. No. You know what? I might get dirty with Battlefield 4, Griffin. That seems like a pretty good idea. Picking up AC4, too.

We can stab some of Stergo creeps. I need to get AC4. Wait, so you're going to get AC4, too. We can stab some of Stargo creeps. I need to get... Wait, so you're going to get AC4 for the PS4? Yeah, I think so. Hmm, interesting. I think I might get that Need for Speed, too. That's looking nice. Really?

Deep coffers. I want it to be good. Cosa Griffin. Think about Mac, too. Think about... I like it. Super and Max competitive multiplayer. So I do want to mention before we wrap the show up that at noon next Wednesday.

Noon Eastern. Noon Eastern, thank you. At noon Eastern next Wednesday, which is the 13th, I believe. Yeah. We are going to be doing a massive, enormous, 12-hour-long PS4 livestream. 12 hours of PS4. You don't have to watch all of it. You only have to watch as much as you want to watch.

But if you do not watch all of it, I will be very hurt. We're going to be having special guests some. We're going to be playing through all the launch games. We're going to be talking about certain features. If you are sitting at work with nothing to do next Wednesday for 12 hours if you're working a 24 hour day at work

I pity you but also we're going to be doing this we'll be doing the same you know we don't want to think we're impartial we'll be doing the same thing for Xbox when it launches so get pumped and tune in and that's going to do it for us here on the besties

make sure you join us again next Friday until then more stuff on Polygon like Russ said the big live stream Wednesday at noon so so much more coming out in the next couple weeks so it's going to be huge stick with us and stick with us your pals the besties

every Friday we're right here and we hope for at least five for at least five more Fridays at least five more Fridays we will be here until then I'm Justin McElroy I'm Griffin McElroy we haven't done a sign-off in a long time and I'm

Ross Frushtick we never do this together we're the besties because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best things? Besties!