The Besties - The Besties 81: 'Twas the night before Besty

Episode Date: December 14, 2013

I can't believe we're about to film another end of the year Besties Besty Special. But I shouldn't let the excitement spoil this week's episode. Live in the present, Plante! Be here now. Okay, so what do we have? Oh, just a number of heartfelt, respectfully designed video games that challenge our conceptions of the medium. You know, that's all. 3:30 - Best Gachapon machine of 2013 (Heroes of Dragon Age) 19:10 - Best interlude (The Entertainment, Kentucky Route Zero) 30:30 - Halftime! 35:00 - Best reason to reload (Teleglitch: Die More Edition) 41:00 - Best educational game (The Novelist) 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!

show me that smile again show me that smile don't waste another minute on you crying hi everybody this is kirk cameron i'm here to tell you about why the banana is the vehicle for god's love have you ever really looked at the human eye each other. We got the world spinning round in our hands. Maybe you and me gotta be the luckiest dreamers that never quit dreaming. I'm Alan Thicke.

I don't have anything to say. I just wanted to do my Alan Thicke impression. Boy, isn't Canada great? I'm Jody Sweetin. What am I doing here? Sharing the laughter and love.

Sharing the laughter and love. Hi, I'm the head of Vox Media Law. Do you like to formally apologize for our infringement of multiple copyrights and the impersonations of many different individuals. It's fine if we discuss them editorially.

Those things suck. Those impressions were bad. There. That song is also my favorite sea shanty from Assassin's Creed 4. screen for. My name is Justin McElroy, and I know the best thing of the week. Hey, guys, Griffin here. I know the best game of the week.

My name is Christopher Plant, and I know the best game of the week. My name is Russ Froschdick, and I know the best game of the week. Welcome to the besties, where we talk about the latest and greatest in sports, Twitter, Twitter apps, Twitter fashion, Twitter etiquette, and movies, and games. But this week, it's just all about games. We're bringing it back to just a game-centric episode. Can we talk a little bit about Twitter fashion? Because I'm interested to hear what that is. A lot of people right now are switching their Twitter icons and names to something a little more Yuletide-y. Yeah, I hate that.

I don't like it either. I did it, and Chris did it, but... It's really obnoxious. Every fucking holiday needs its own... Flag Day's coming up. I'm Russ Flag-tic. Fuck you. That's actually not bad. Yeah, could have turned out way worse. and holiday needs its own like you know flag day's coming up i'm russ flag tick oh that's actually not bad yeah that's pretty good it turned out way worse mine's a horrifying image from christmas kisses which is just a old bearded man head emerging from a present which suits me

just fine but it is upsetting is it like ghoulies where he's coming out of the toilet but it's a present every time i see it it still kind of upsets me. Everybody should go by there and just follow me real quick. Twitter. He's A plus K is his name. Let's talk about some of the best things that's going on in games right now. The year is winding down, so the major releases have died off as the christmas rush uh has passed us by down in the we down in the dregs now we in the soup a lot of big uh a lot of fun uh worthwhile

indie games still coming down the pike uh and smaller titles etc etc so we still got some stuff to talk about who wants to start us up proper um not me. Not it. Yeah, let's pick a big name release. I'll pick a... How about Dragon Age? You guys remember that franchise? Whoa. Vaguely. Yeah, not a big deal.

EA Fantasy. R.A. Salvador. He didn't have anything to do with that, but he's a big name in fantasy. Dragon Age is back, better than ever. Kind of not really, though. In Heroes of Dragon Age, it's a portable mobile release

for phones and tablets. I was dismayed that it wasn't just a direct port of the Facebook Dragon Age game. Y'all remember that little ditty? Yeah, it was pretty gah. It was pretty gah, as Justin just said. That was a decent little title. A lot of turn-based strategy, team-building shit going on there.

Heroes of Dragon Age, not so much into that. I called it the best gashapon machine of 2013, although that's probably not even true because Super Sick Man Golf 2 had a sweet little Gachapon machine in there, too. Did you want to explain what a Gachapon machine is for people who don't know? A capsule toy machine, I guess, if you're a dullard. I think people probably still don't know what that is. Like at a supermarket, you put a quarter in it, and you get a thing out.

Okay, now they know got it um i just figured like it's been in so many like shinmu and that the zelda game boy color games like what really yeah sure the gacha tree you don't remember that shit anyway let's let's we're so distracted heroes of dragon age um is so so goddamn infuriating um because it has all of these elements that could make it a spectacular uh mobile role-playing game and it comes really really really close uh it looks fucking fantastic it looks absolutely tremendous and to see like these characters in this world uh presented like beautifully uh like bar none one of the one of the better looking games um is is so heartening and then to watch the actual mechanics of the game fall so short is so disappointing

basically you're saying it it does it well just before we get into the gameplay does it look better than like infinity, Infinity Blade? I don't know. I may be conflating, like, how much I dig the Dragon Age world and art style. Like, it looks a lot like proper Dragon Age. And the character models are all beautiful, and there's a ton of them. Because that's sort of the hook of the game, and why I referred to it as like a capsule machine is you have this portal through which you summon these little statuettes of characters. And the characters have different stats, different things that they're good at.

Sounds like Skylanders. You build a team. No, it's definitely not. You build a team with these characters and you have a few options for boosting them like you can uh cannibalize the characters you don't use to make your other ones stronger you can literally cannibalize them uh i don't i don't know if it doesn't show what happens but they probably do just unhinge their jaw and swallow the other person whole or if you get like two of the same kind you can combine them

to make like a stronger version of that unit um and then there's there's a to its credit a lot of strategy for how you build a team so you have five slots on your team one for like a big monster type unit that's like a special type that can only fill this one slot and then the other four are organized into two in a front row and two in a back row so the front row ones you want to put like your big strong guys up there because they get a health bonus for being in the front. And the back row, you want like your heavier hitters, like your archers and magic people that can't take as much of a beating. And then attacks sort of break down into various ways, like some can attack the entire first row. Some will attack in like a straight column um so so all all of that said there is like a lot of differentiation between the stats between the uh

the different characters there is a lot of consideration for how you put your team together in terms of speed and order and whether your team is like capable of stunning your opponent's big hitters so that you can knock them out without getting murdered. You've got to put some stunners in there. You put a few icy hot stunners in there and you're on your way to being golden. Yeah. What is a bummer? I mean, all that sounded like a bummer to begin with.

Yeah, I'm already bummed. Wow, really? See, that kind of shits my jam, though. Yeah, I'm already buffed. is a hundred percent automated you basically start the battle and then see what happens with the team that you've built so have you played assassin's creed 4 yeah you have yeah so not even that like mini mini game it's kind of like kinway's fleet yes a bit i guess maybe um although there's there's a bit more depth to it than that. But even in Kenway's fleet, you can drop those fire barrels, right, to sort of affect the—you don't even have that. Like, you just watch—

Watch the magic happen. Watch what your dudes do. So, like, if you have a team of, like, super, super slow fighters in the first round, they might get, you know, weakened or wiped out to a point where they won't be able to come back. they might get you know weakened or wiped out to a point where they won't be able to come back so like it's all you put all the english on the ball in the menus and then you just sort of watch watch the result and it's so fucking disappointing because all that they needed was like one more little element of strategy that made you feel like you were in control of the battles. Yeah.

And it could have been like a super, super deep, like really solid mobile role-playing game. I think one of the reasons why it is so automated is because you can either choose to like follow along the quest where you play against AI components. Or you can matchmake against random people or play against your friends through Game Center. And all that shit is actually implemented really, really well. And it's asynchronous. So they don't have to be there when you fight them because it's all automated. Like the battle is going to fucking turn out however it was going to turn out anyway. So it's clearly built for that but that that kind of streamlined multiplayer

doesn't really matter if the mechanics themselves aren't especially deep all you're doing is just watching it play out it's almost like you remember that scene in searching for bobby fisher where laurence fishburne and ben kingsley have to like watch on as the young bobby fisher wannabe is playing chess. And they're all like, dude, why are you pulling out your queen so early? That's not what you're supposed to do. But they can't say that out loud

because that's against the rules of chess rules. So all they can do is just be like, hmm, I was in Gandhi. Totally. Sounds like you really got a handle on this. I was on the Pee Wee Show, totally. I totally get what you're saying russ um no not really like that it's when you say it's more like building

a dnd character sheet and then taking away the dice because that's what it sounds like basically like throwing the dice is the fun part like doing something and having the risk of your own mistakes or your own skill is enjoyable. Not just like, oh, well, I've accumulated stats on my sheet. And well, let me look at your sheet. Well, it looks like I'm better than you. You lose. I mean, there is an element of that. Yes, because, you know, you have a chance to do critical hits.

You have the turn order is sort of abstract like there are fast units medium units and slow units so the fast units go first but the order in which like all the fast units go i haven't quite figured out how that breaks down and like that sort of shit is actually very very important but like you can't make your fast unit defend like it's just gonna do you can't even choose who they fucking attack like they just go they just go for it and yeah it's not it whenever a battle's over you don't feel this sense of accomplishment like the tutorial has these few battles where you just get wiped off the map like you just get murdered and it says oh

well let's go buy a new guy and then you buy a new guy and drop him in like all right now try again and then you do it and win and it's like that was the fucking solution there it is and there is some you can you spend it like in-game gold to use the machine to to get new dudes it's not a machine it's like a portal or whatever um but you can spend more gold to like guarantee your chance of getting a rarer unit um or you can spend the infamous second form of currency um to get like a super rare unit and you'll get that second currency drop by drop by drop by playing through like expert challenges in the game or you can just fucking buy them or you can just like spend your real ass money on them but i don't know why anyone would buy anything in this game because it sounds

so boring that's like oh yay i can play this elite unit in this boring strategy game i mean there is something to be said about the fact that you have all this, like, all these customization options, and you have, like, your ability to build a team is very thorough, and there are a lot of ways to upgrade that team. And, like, that shit is very rewarding,

but, like, that might do it for some people. Yeah. But all you can do is just, like, watch it all play out. Like, Pat Morita in The End of Karate Kid. When Daniel-san goes out there, like, he's going to get kicked in the ass by the Cobra Kai. All Pat Morita can do is watch the horror play out. Yeah.

So here's the thing I hate about in-app purchases. I want to say this really quick. Don't worry. It's another stupid metaphor. But do you remember, like, did you guys collect pogs as a kid? Sure. I loved collecting pogs. And if you don't know what they are, they were, like,

they were the top of old glass milk bottles. But then they became, like, this whole, like, toy thing. Fruit juice, actually. They were fruit juice. They were little circles of cardboard. Whatever. The point is they were little circles of cardboard and collect them and then you'd like trade them with friends and gradually accumulate like rare pogs um and that was fun that was like

a fun thing to do with your friends um because you know it was interactive and you got gradually got what you wanted and you didn't always get what you wanted. But there was always one kid who was, like, this asshole with all the money in the world who would come and look at your collection and then either buy them from you and your friends or just go into the store and buy everything all at once. And it totally ruined it for everyone else because it was like, well, it's not fun anymore. That kid has the best collection i will never be able to compete with that and like i can't even resist just like giving my stuff to him because he'll splat off me and that's what pretty much everything i've been

playing on mobile feels like lately where it's like just to compete uh i can either dedicate my entire life to grinding this thing or spend money and there will always be people who are out there willing to spend more money and I can't get into it how do you make the decision on whether or not you're going to spend money on a game like a free to play game

yeah I don't no that's not true I did recently and I hated myself for it. If I play a game like Tiny Tower for hours and hours on end, I'll give them money. Yeah, that's typically how I count. I paid for something in Super Stickman Golf 2.

I thought that was a game that actually cost money, though, and then you paid for more stuff. What? Super Stickman Golf. it's like a 299 game and there's like dlc i guess yeah i think there's a difference between like downloadable content and in-app like i i wish there was better terms for this because there is such a difference between you know like more levels than like hey you don't have to grind anymore we made mine purposely boring so my issue with this game my issue with this game is less that it's pay to win um because really

that term really is only going to matter to you in this game if you do a lot of the pvp shit which you don't have to like there's a there's a big long quest mode full of like dragon agey lore shit my problem is that like the there are like five different tiers of rarity for these figures to fall into and each step you move up like those heroes beat the ever-loving shit out of the level before like it's not even fucking close so like when you get a low rarity character it's not like oh good i have this one for my collection it's like well fuck like this guy obviously sucks like there's it's it's a bad rpg problem of like getting new things and having it be like the opposite of a reward almost like you just see that guy and you think like well i'm gonna have

one of my other guys eat him like fucking cool i don't know it's just it's it's kind of the opposite of the sort of reward structure that role-playing games usually go for anyway it's just so fucking frustrating because I haven't played like a good role-playing game on mobile for a while and it's because of this shit that just fucking kills me like they put they make it look amazing sound amazing put all these put all these uh um all this presentation work into it to make it look like a triple A-ass game, and then they just make it so shitty.

Make it better. Just make it better. It's not that fucking hard. And then I play games that are really, really good and have all these really great mechanics that just look like dog shit because they don't have the full power of EA leaning behind them.

Like, make a good fucking game, guys. No, you can blame one game, and it's The Simpsons tapped out. Even The Simpsons tapped out. It's a moneymaker, and now everyone's trying to rip it off. They all want that sort of cash. It's a different type of game cash. It's a different thing, though, right? Because I'm not going to say that Simpsons tapped out is a bad game.

Like, it has a simulation thing that people dig i play the fuck out of heyday i'm not afraid to admit it but like role-playing games are so underserved because everybody's afraid to put like a fucking turn-based menu in that shit do it i swear to god and it's not gonna scare people away to choose shit from a menu people love that pokemon people love them pokemons it just drives me up a wall man i'm sorry there's pokemon on mobile oh my gosh so uh should i bring the next thing yeah please yeah please sure okay so uh you guys heard about this game kentucky rot zero right hell yeah yeah so for those that don't know about it real quick it's like a point and click adventure set in kind of

the south with some really weird themes and everything's a little stranger than you'd expect it to be kind of like uh i don't know like cronenberg meets meets Lynch meets Twilight Zone meets... With bad graphics. Okay, with really weird graphics. I love them. I think it's a beautiful game. You know what the graphics remind me of is Out of This World. Out of the World? Yeah, totally. Yeah.

So it's great. And when I say point-and-click adventure, I don't usually like that stuff. There's none of those dumb puzzles that get in the way of those sorts of games. It just has a really interesting way of getting you from point a to point b that uh i just i just eat it up but you're probably like i don't know i don't know if i want to do that that sounds like a gamble and i don't want to spend i think it's like 15 bucks for the entire season of games uh five in all i believe uh well guess what they make interludes and they're free and they're kind

of tangentially connected to the story but they won't spoil anything and the one that i am bringing is the best interlude of the week and it's called the entertainment um and justin you actually had a chance to play this right i did i experienced the entertainment for myself so just i'm not like talking about all this exposition do you want to tell everyone what the entertainment for myself. So just so I'm not like talking about all this exposition, do you want, do you want to tell everyone what the entertainment is? No, I think you should do that.

Oh, okay. You haven't even, you haven't even set it up yet. It's your, it's your baby. I want, I want to give us.

Also, I don't think you and I agree on it. So like we should. Oh, tension. Yeah. There's some mild tension here. Okay.

So the entertainment is a one-act play in which you are one of the characters, or one of the actors playing one of the characters. You are sitting at the front of the stage, and scenes are kind of happening at a bar behind you. But you can also look in full 360 view. You can see what's happening in the wings you can see the audience sitting in the dark and you have the option to kind of click on things to either hear

what's happening in the scenes or you can see some stage direction that's on the table that is your performance you can see the reviews as they are coming in by looking into the back of the theater. And it's great. I don't want to spoil what the entertainment actually is, but it's very much, I guess, an homage to kind of like the Eugene O'Neill. I know the creators say that Beckett was an inspiration, but... Yeah, it feels like Beckett. It feels much more... I don't think so at all. I think it feels much more like O'Neill and Miller.

It's very traditional American drama. Right. It doesn't delve into, like, absurdist. It's not Harold Pinter. Like, it's... Yeah, and it's not even, like, existential life Beckett. You guys are putting me into a fucking coma. Sorry.

Okay, okay. Well, if you're in a coma, you're probably not going to like Beckett. That was the worst 15 seconds of podcasts I've ever been a part of. That was fucking terrible. We turned into another podcast just then. We turned into a theater podcast. Here at the Besties, we talk about so many things. Mamet.

Good one. Guys, I have to get my theater education. Here's what I'll say, and I'll try not to be pretentious when i say it uh it does feel like you're in a theater watching a play play out complete with like really cool lighting and sound design and um it's sort of an interesting like story that you're following along with and it just like i felt even though it's, like, literally, like, I guess 20 minutes long and free, but I was, like, totally engaged and, like, felt like I was inside the scene, which is more than I can say for a lot of, like, AAA console games. And if you're one of the rare people who has Oculus Rift, you kind of can be inside of it because it was designed with Oculus in mind. Yeah, it works with Oculus Rifto which is very cool as well i mean i i

honestly think like if you are interested in indie games at all there's no reason why you shouldn't download it it ran great on my macbook air so you don't need to like a beefy computer to run it um and uh it's you know experimental but i found it way more interesting than just like a lot of those games that are like experimental and not at all fun or engaging i think it's weird for the sake of weird yeah it's very accessible but it i mean what good friend is giving a shit about is like how you will talk about this game it is a game that wants to be treated with like a certain importance and it wants you to think and talk critically and apply you know an understanding of theater or anything to it it doesn't want to be talked about like yeah i mean

it feels like you know whether it's theater or like you just left the david lynch movie and are talking about how fucking weird it was like that's how i say some pretty crazy things like it was weird but at the same time conceptually it's very clear on what it is i mean sure what you have described is like yes that is yes that is what it is it is it is you're pretending to be an actor in a play and the play is going on around you i mean like that's the whole the whole bit um and i think in that sense it it almost makes the, mechanically, it's not surreal. I mean, it is using game mechanics, but in a fairly mundane sense. I mean, you know what they're angling for.

So is it kind of like the opera scene in Final Fantasy VI? You're the worst. It's not that far off. Remember that scene in Hook where he hits the baseball and they're like, run home Jack? It's exactly like that. Okay. I just don't understand. I haven't played Kentucky Route Zero.

Well, I would say I honestly believe you should play Act 1, but I don't think you need to play any of it to enjoy this or be interested in this. Just give it a shot. It is literally just 20 minutes long. I think it's not for everyone, but that's what you can say about everything.

So, whatevs. I'm curious what your issue is, Justin. It's not my issue. I guess, like, you were so high on it, and I get it. Like, I get why, I think, but it just didn't grab me in the same way. I thought it was interesting.

Did you play the installation one? The one before this that is about installation art? No. So what I really like about what they've been doing with the interludes is they're taking things that are things that I think they have a certain expertise in, you know, outside of video games. that I think they have a certain expertise in, you know, outside of video games. And they're using their jobs basically as an excuse to deconstruct those things, which is, again, we're getting into, like,

high-minded territory here. But in the case of the entertainment, I like it because even if you don't know about theater, it's this really cool deconstruction of what goes into a production. And you are happening to be right in the middle of it but you see uh you hear the sound effects that are you know playing on stage and you're used to just hearing sounds when you're playing video games so it doesn't mean anything

but then it explicitly states what those are uh it it just makes you very aware of everything that's happening to you and that's kind of like aware of your senses. And I think that is really, really fascinating. Yeah. I would agree with that. And something I don't expect from video games. Yeah.

I would say like, even the characters, which are obviously like use that stylized, like out of this world style, I, for, because of the art design and the, or rather because of the sound design and like the noise that they make as they walk across the stage and stuff like that like they felt way more real to me than like

the pirates on my ship and assassin's creed 4 do like they felt like believable and meaty and like i i was engaged so yeah yeah what i love so much about the entertainment in just Kentucky Route Zero 2 as a whole is when I'm playing these games, I feel like I'm in the hands of smart people who are confident in what they're saying. They're not just doing what I don't like about some indie games where it's like an ambiguous attempt at importance. And it's like, well, this is, you know, it's a metaphor for the world and, you know, yada, yada, yada. And it doesn't really mean jack shit, but you can overread into it all you want. Well, here, I think it's very clear what they want you to take away from it. And I think there is room for you to bring something to it. But I think when I'm playing it, I get the sense of like, oh, they meant to do this.

This was very carefully thought out. oh, they meant to do this. This was very carefully thought out. I guess what I was saying, to try to clarify my point a little bit more, I think the interesting things that it is saying is not being said by the game itself. I don't think that the idea that this is a game makes it more affecting than it would be if it was just a you know a play that i was

watching outside the idea of like being in the play but you're not actually performing in any sort of meaningful way i mean you because of the way it's designed your part is a panamime um so you're still very much an observer uh sure and and I guess if I was disappointed about something, it was the fact that I wasn't more a part of the experience. Yeah, I think that's totally fair. But that's maybe just more from this than it actually is. And that it's even able to do on the restance of two people who are supposed to be making another game.

I do agree with you. I would say the one thing that it is able to do as a game that it couldn't do as any other medium, even being a play, is that it can give you that opportunity, and it can make that opportunity available. You know, no one's going to get a chance to have that sort of interactive art experience in, you know, rural Kentucky inucky in real life you know you're not

going to have this staging um if something like this even happened you know it would be in the moma and you would have to wait online for three days to get a chance to do it and and that's what again like same with the installation art one is they're finding ways to bring these experiences to lots of people via video games. And that dog loves it. Yeah, I think that's interesting. Or is that an ambulance? I think it's an ambulance. Okay.

If that's a dog, fuck. But yeah, over the past couple weeks, I just think Kentucky Razzera is blown up for me in terms of how great I think it is. So I'm sure there'll be something that I hope we'll be talking about a lot more on the end of the year show. Oh my gosh, I'll save that for the end of the show. It's halftime. What are you guys into?

We can talk about when I got married. Do you want to talk about getting wedded? I didn't know if you wanted to delve in. So it was freezing cold and what is normally from what i understand pretty damn hot down there in texas it was it was 27 degrees during my outdoor wedding which is um not ideal just like for human just for human flesh it's not the ideal temperature to like steep that shit in uh it was 65 degrees that same day last year

which is pretty cool thanks a lot for that uh earth i guess um yeah obama thanks a lot obama for the weather for the for the kindness um yeah it was it was pretty cold you guys like we all put on a brave face justin was there i invited him thank you you're you're quite welcome um it was cold though you're right it is it was were you tired of people talking about how cold it was uh i was like the nobody everybody else was too polite like oh there's a beautiful ceremony like thanks it was but like my dick is gone. My dick shattered into crystalline shards. Wow. So was this, like, a last minute?

Well, obviously you knew it was going to be cold that week. But, like, is there tension leading up to it? Like, what are we going to do? Yes. The venue was great because they gave us, like, a tent and a bunch of heaters and fire pits and stuff. And, like, once we got into that like heat zone yeah and created like a little sanctuary of warmth uh that was really nice but like during the ceremony and when we were taking pictures and anytime you got outside of that perimeter it was it was

dick shatteringly cold yeah it was really it was pretty miserable, we had a real short ceremony because nobody likes a long ceremony. Yeah. And then we just had an open bar, so that helped to keep people warm, I think. Damn straight. All things considered, I guess I'd call it the wedding of the century. Does it feel,

since you've been working on this wedding for a year or so now, does it feel like you took a ginormous poop? It does both figuratively and literally. You did. I don't really want to talk about that, really. Dying? Do you guys want to know anything else about being married?

Yeah, how is it? It's pretty good. Yeah. Do you want any tips about keeping it fresh i will say i will say this about uh from a gamer's perspective because that's all we do great it's getting from a gamer's perspective uh it makes it hard to to was the with this ring on my finger oh no it's getting in the it's getting in the way of like My usual like digital movements That I'm like super used to doing

Such a humble brag What? Oh yeah sorry I'm having trouble playing my keyboard What with this ginormous Wedding ring on In my sense of bliss First of all I don't think dudes get to brag about like

Did you get a massive rock on that thing? She hook you up? Yeah, man. She done me good. No, it's tough. Playing guitar, that career of mine is fucking over. Because you just can't do it anymore. It feels that way now.

I promise you, and I think Plan will probably back me up, you will get used to it. Eventually you correct to it, right? It just becomes part of your finger. It's like when a star pitcher breaks his shoulder or something like that, and then he has to pitch around the pain. That's sort of where I'm at. My StarCraft 2

APMs have plummeted, and it's because my pinky and ring finger just keep, like, tripping all over each other. Have you considered wearing the ring around your neck like Nathan Drake? I thought about doing that, but then I realized how very, very silly that would look. Yeah. Just how completely silly it would look.

Because you really would need the skin-tight, like, waffle shirt and, like, the shoulder holster to, like, make the look set off. What did you call it? Skin-tight waffle shirt. Yeah shoulder holster to make the look set off. What did you call it? Skin-tight waffle shirt. Yeah, that's something. You know, like one of those thermals? Man, I wish I had a shirt made of waffles. Me too.

Anyway, let's talk about another video game. I'm sick of bragging about being married. It is really great, though. If you have the means, I highly recommend it uh we can talk about my game hit me i'm ready uh so my game uh is actually came out i think a few months ago um but i didn't play it because it wasn't on mac and then when it came to mac i didn't play it for a while because i was busy. And then Steam had their little sale thing, and they sold a bunch of games for really cheap,

and I bought two games during that sale. One of them was Rogue Legacy, which we've already talked about on the show. Yummy, yummy. Delicious game. It's a delight. And then the other one is a game called Teleglitch Die More Edition. Presumably there was a Teleglitch before this one edition. But interestingly enough, they're both roguelikes,

but handle rogueliking in different ways. So Teleglitch is a top-down shooter, you know, picture it like a dual-stick shooter, if you will. But the maps are randomly generated.

The items are sort of scattered around the map randomly. And it plays almost like a top-down Doom insofar as, like, it's very tense and scary. And ammo is very limited. And you're sort of just creeping around this world trying to survive and shoot dudes. And you find items and weapons. And there's actually a whole like weapon crafting system so if you find like two tubes and a m chip you can make like a boss shotgun let me stop you here what's your like best like what's this the best of this is the best what did i i don't remember what i wrote in the email something you wrote this is the best reason to reload.

Oh, yeah. Best reason to reload. Okay, good. Thank you for reminding me. So this is the best reason to reload because it is one of those games where reloading is a big part of the you can get screwed over because reloading takes a noted amount of time.

And because it's so difficult and because it's a roguelike if you die you get sent back to the very beginning so that moment that you have where it's like oh did i reload oh i didn't yeah i just got eaten by a goblin is far more intense than it would be if it was just like oh whatever i'll load that quick save piece of cake isn't that creating like artificial drama like Like, because... I mean, you can say that about any roguelike, really. Yeah, exactly. I don't think it's artificial. I think it just

encourages precision and the learning of the mechanics each time you play. Like, I'm not upset when I have to... Well, I am a little bit upset, but I'm not bothered by having to replay a level over again, because it's about mastering. It's like

Spelunky. Remember Spelunky? Remember that game that we talked about? The greatest game of the generation? Yeah. So, I mean, that's the genre. If you don't like roguelikes, if you don't like starting from scratch and having the satisfaction of learning the mechanics

slowly but surely until you're an absolute god at them, you probably won't like this game. It is called Die More Edition. So you will die a lot. It's very, very difficult. Perhaps too difficult. I think even I, lover of really difficult games, think this game

is probably a little too difficult. Thank you for not saying refreshed at Game Master like we all assumed you would but uh yeah it's um it really like it feels tense in the way that like a lot of first-person shooters don't anymore this isn't a first-person shooter it's a top-down game but in the in that like throwback feeling of like when you're first playing doom and you had like two shotgun bullets and a fucking fireball throwing imp came out the door and you freaked out like it has that same vibe you know that vibe have you lived that vibe i do is there any like level of persistence like when you die so actually to enjoying a roguelike. There is some minor persistence in that if you get to

level, like, three, or, I'm sorry, if you get to level five, every time you start, if you want to skip right to level three, you can do that. Does that make sense? Yeah. It puts you at a minor disadvantage because you don't have, like, as much equipment as you

would have if you had played through from the beginning but that's sort of the level of persistence there's also like as you play you like get you learn schematics like how to build certain weapons and that keep that is tracked in a database so you can like you know look at the database

kind of Spelunky-esque Spelunky-esque in that way shortcuts to other levels but by the time you get there like you don't have the cape or whatever yeah um and uh yeah it just it was an interesting take on a roguelike um one that i hadn't you know it feels like everyone like rogue legacy took on the castlevania genre and like added roguelikey stuff um you know, Binding of Isaac was like a Legends of Zelda style

Right, I like that as like a side dish I like roguelike elements on the side not when they are like the complete fucking focus of the game Do you think that's what Sponky is?

Um kind of, but I like Spon like so maybe that thing i just said was there you go boom i never got i never got deep into ftl because i just i just found it too too punishing like i got super invested and like i understand why i built tension and i guess the game was um good about doing that better than most but man oh man did it make me not really want to play the game again after i had a few really good runs that just ended in in tragedy i think those games like you have to not want to win in a certain degree like that makes any sense i i i enjoyed ftl even when i lost. I never really thought that I would beat it. So I just had fun kind of seeing how far I could get. Yeah.

I don't know. Maybe I'm during. And I will say whenever you feel that way about a game and then you do manage to finally beat it. I beat Spelunky for the first time this year and it was the goddamn greatest accomplishment of my entire life. So like, if you can stick with it, it pays off.

But I rarely am able to okay uh who's last me i like yeah i'd like to talk with you gentlemen about my game it is a professional game made by a person uh i do not know the developer his christian name i'm not aware of but the game is called the novelist made by kent hudson kent hudson that's a good name um so the novelist is uh a game in which you're a spirit of some sort like wine or booze uh you're a spirit of some sort that's living as occupied a house that a family moves into uh for the summer the family is uh the titular nautilus his wife and their son tommy who's five um and the as the spirit you in in in each chapter, the game spans a summer at this resort house, basically, a vacation home of sorts. Each chapter spans a week in their lives.

lives, the way it plays out is that each week there is a dilemma of some sort. There is some problem. Each person has sort of their own approach to the issue, to the problem, and sometimes the problems aren't related. Like in one chapter, the novelist Dan, I think is his name, Dan wants more time to work on his novel. And his wife, Linda, wants the family to eat together. And their son maybe wants to go to the amusement park or something. As the spirit, you wander around this house looking for clues as to what the characters want. Sometimes those take the form of diary entries. Sometimes they take the form of paintings or notes that they've left.

And you can also climb into the memories of each of the people in the house and see their memories that sort of influence their decision-making and what they want. And you, as the spirit, make a decision as to what path they're going to take, who's basically going to win and get what they want in the family. And you can also secondarily choose a compromise, which is sort of like a half-hearted attempt at what one of the family members wants.

And then one person is just getting left out in the cold, not getting anything they want. And as you make these decisions, the story of the family sort of changes and evolves to shape around how you've guided them. So as the spirit, there's sort of a parallel between the spirit and a novelist in its own right who's sort of choosing the way a story unfolds and which characters win and which characters lose. There's actually two very different methods of playing the game. In one, you're free to walk around the house at your leisure. Or like float, right? Well, yeah, actually float.

You can zip between light fixtures to get around the house more quickly. In the other mode is stealth, where the members of the family can see you, so you have to be careful about how you go around the house and how you avoid their eyes, and usually that's zipping between light fixtures again. But you can also make the light fixtures flicker to distract them so you can get something if you want to. I didn't play that way.

I just played the story mode. I don't play that way i just played the the story uh mode i don't think that this would necessarily be served i went back and checked out a little bit playing stealth i didn't particularly enjoy it mainly because the loading times are pretty long for uh when you when you get caught by a member of the family you you're sort of set back a bit there's a bit of a load um i called it the most, the best educational game of the week. And I think that that's, I think that that, the thing that surprised me most about the novelist, it's definitely, you know, an art game, whatever that means.

It's not traditional mechanics by any stretch of the imagination. But what's very interesting about it is that I in my own life have to a lot of times choose between work and family and and keep those two balanced and the novelist was surprisingly like super helpful in helping me to sort of like a nice exercise in seeing in other people's perspectives because it's so rare that in any sort of entertainment, you actually are that aware of motivations for three different people, conflicting motivations, and you are deciding what is the most worthwhile.

Can you win or lose? Can you make it to the end of the game and like your your whole family's gone or can you make it to the end of the game and like your book is like shitty well yes i mean you you there are many many different outcomes depending on how much and and and in what degrees and what situations individual people win and lose in certain scenarios. And it's not binary. Like some scenarios, like so each of these is broken up into like days. And some days the decision is, you know, it's important but not super important. But there are other days where like the decision you make will have a major impact.

And the days are randomly organized each time you play them. So if you played it, you would not have the same order of days that Justin had. So you don't really know when an important day is coming. No one doesn't really alert you that it's an important day.

You are not the only... I mean, it is very much about just deciding how these characters lives play out there's not a win-lose scenario in a traditional sense because you are controlling the destinies of three people um and and actually the only thing that i i wasn't crazy about is the game has this sort of weirdly um there's a weirdly patriarchal overtone to it because you are making a decisions that for this entire family but the way you um the way you pass your decision on is you whisper into uh dan the novelist you whisper into his ear while he's sleeping

which gives the implication that like Dan is making these massive decisions, you know, for his entire family. I would have liked it a little bit better. I think if, if he had been, if the spirit or whatever had whispered like to the, the couple.

So it didn't put this, this focus on Dan, because I think by making aside from the patriarchal overtones, I think by tying you to to dan as the your sort of avatar in the world um it it makes the decisions feel more like a win and lose depending on the fate of his his book uh i i really enjoyed it and i think what i found found surprising about it was at the end, I wasn't happy with one of the results. Things didn't go very well for the son. And while I was not happy about it, it was also fair.

Like, I made decisions that I thought were appropriate, and I felt horrible that things didn't work out for the kid. But it was weird because it seemed to show what I guess my priorities right now are as, like, someone, a young married person. Absolutely. Yeah, I absolutely feel the same way. The idea of that couple being happy. And I was focused on that, I think, over. The idea of that couple being happy. And I was focused on that, I think, over.

And I think that if I had, I wonder if I go back and play it, you know, once I have a kid, if my, you know, priorities would shift as I was playing it. Because the wife's arc is sort of about her happiness with her husband. There's a part of it's satisfaction with herself, but they make it very clear that those two are tied together for her he is part of what's making her feel like you know and and caring for their son is part of what's sort of robbing her life of some sense of satisfaction so like i was sort of biased towards helping their relationship but i think a lot of that is just where about where i am in my life right now the reason i'm having a hard time i guess connecting with this is i these types of elements have been in games before and i i never ever approached them with what is what kind of person am i and how do these decisions reflect on my real life is always from a very mechanical like

what is going to get me to the ending that I think I'm going to like the most? And you're saying that I can't wait to go back and play it once I have a kid. Then are you just going to play it trying to get the good kid ending? No, I was really going by my honest, like, in the scenario. I'll give you an example, okay?

So in one of the scenarios, your wife's grandmother dies., your wife's grandmother dies. Dan's wife's grandmother dies. Linda, her grandmother dies. And the decision is Dan's publishers want him to go on this book tour, and it directly conflicts with Linda. And you know that if you go with her to the funeral then it's going to hurt the book if you work on the book instead of with her then you are are going to impact your your relationship um and then tommy the kid he wants something banal I don't know. He wants to play it in the sand or something.

Kids. Yeah, I know, right? So in that situation, I thought, okay, well, Linda should get the points here. She should be the one who – that seems much more important to me than working on the book. But a book tour would be a really huge promotional opportunity the other part of it is i don't know what happened directly before that so maybe i arbitrarily made the decision to have linda win in the last day and then in this day like i definitely want her to win and that can really set up some bad patterns that can like really impact the the outcome and

and i was honestly and it makes you pay when you don't like for instance in that situation for example there is a there you get like a little epilogue as to how you're not an epilogue i guess but there's a section that it writes in a in a book in a fictional book about sort of what that character did as a result of the decision and like in that one tommy the kid uh plays by himself and is sad that he can't go to the beach and tries to they make this specific detail he tries to make a ramp for his cars with the uh shovel from his bucket but the shovel is too light and it doesn't work. I know, right? It's like the biggest bummer.

And that's the only mechanical... I thought you were going to say scorpions came out of the bucket. Scorpions came out. And that's the only mechanical impetus. I mean, there is no mechanical attachment. It's just about crafting a story and shaping a story and how you want to see it play out.

And to Griffin's point that this has been in most games, the problem is it's always supplementing other games. This is the game. In most games, you'd make a decision and it'd be like, okay, you're going to make this decision and now you'll get plus 15

goals. It's horseshit in Old Republic, for example. it's not a real emotional decision i'm making because what i want is lightning like i want lightning to shoot on my head so yeah i'll kill a baby there there are examples i think the the walking dead games are a pretty good example of this but like the point i was trying to make is that it's not coming from a place of like personal morality it's coming from a place of like oh i i really like uh this one character so whenever i get to a decision about whether or not they live or die i'm gonna do the i'm gonna do the

live one just because that's the story that i want to tell and like for me that sort of depletes the this idea of it being a reflection of the type of person that I am because to me, the type of person I am is like the guy who likes Gary. Like, it just doesn't. So maybe if the stakes are not live or die, they're just like, well, you're just living in a house with people. That sort of removes that impetus and you're really just like making decisions

for how you would deal with that situation in real life. To always choose one character, it is not, like, you will not do that. in real life and i think to always choose one character it is not you like you will not do that it is set up so emotionally like you haven't met gary he fucking rules uh you will not like it is not designed so you like dan wins all the time like dan wins all the time and i don't know what would happen it would be brutal i'll play with gary in his sandbox he didn't even want to do that he's a grown grown-ass man, but I'll do it anyway. Get in his sandbox with me, Gary. It's a blast.

We'll use our hands. Don't worry about the shovel. It's like $14. I think it might even be on sale for like $12. It's on Mac and PC. You know who made it is more of those 2K Marin devs. The 2K Marin dream lives on as the studio that would go on to make amazing, innovative IPs just not actually at 2K Marin. Just not at that particular company.

Yeah, the playtesters for this is like a who's who of game development. It's like crazy the big names that he has on like his like these people. He also has a section where he thanks parents for talking with him about the experience of raising a child in the credits. Where like wanting to get what that dynamic is right. Which is I think speaks a lot to like what kind of game this is. Because you really. I think the thing Griffin that you don't realize until you play it is like it doesn't feel like you're making story beat decisions to try to get to an outcome it's it's really much more compartmentalized than that like you you make very small decisions

and hope that you can find a balance where everybody is happy, or is at least, you know, moderately well off. And I think if you're playing with that, like, that is the goal, the unstated goal that you are working towards, and that's what makes it so difficult, I think, is because you are playing with, like, not about this character's going to win, but how can I make it so at the end of the day everyone's as happy as they can be? And once you're playing it with that and you're making, like, real decisions about what that means for you, like, in an impossible decision where no one's going to be happy, making those kinds of decisions is really interesting. And I think genuinely gave me more perspective into making those decisions in my own life, which, you know,

name me the number of games that do that. Six. Six. Six games. Yeah. Check it out on Wikipedia. He's right.

So who won? That sounds interesting. I know I didn't fucking win. I would give it to Justin. yeah his yeah that was that was a good argument i like that i want to i'm going to check out this game now you sold me on it justin you sold me on the morality of sand i hope i get a kick i hope i get a kick back um everyone i guess hold on to your assholes for next week. Yeah. So we're going to, I think it's time we should talk about what's going to go down.

Okay. I'm ready. We're going to, I'd like to, I'd like to know we're going to jam firecrackers up everyone's assholes and blow them clean away. You guys might realize, or might already know that we haven't been picking a best game of the week

all year. Did you notice that? I noticed it. Despite that, we've all sort of discussed it, and we have quite a swath of games that we consider to be the best games of the year. And we're going to pit them against one another, but that doesn't mean you don't get to be involved

because we're letting you, the listener, vote on the final four games to be involved because we're letting you the listener vote on the final four games to be included uh right now we have a link up on polygon.com uh that uh lists the 12 games that we picked and then you uh readers can write in the comments please please jebus creepus don't vote for the 12 games that we already picked, guys. Yeah, that's tremendously dumb if you do that. Your vote will be thrown into a volcano. Your vote will be destroyed. You will be disenfranchised. Vote for...

The idea is that we would have an awesome series of submissions from folks and we could fill out that final four. Don't... Probably don't vote for Bioshock Infinite either because everybody has done that. That one's probably okay.

I don't know why it wasn't in the top 12 already. This isn't a top 12, to be clear. These are our 12 finalists. Yeah, they're not in any order. You never know how the bracketing is going to shake out. Some of these might do all right. Yeah. Do you want to read the list?

Sure. What we have already? I'm curious. The Last of Us. Last of Russ. The Last of Russ. Grand Theft Auto V. Towerfall.

Tearaway. Legend of Zelda Link Between Worlds. Rogue Legacy. Brothers. Super Mario 3D World, Assassin's Creed Floor, Gone Home, Saints Row Floor, and Tomb Raider 2013 Edition.

There's definitely some biggies that are missing from there. I know Animal Crossing's not in there. Bioshock, as you mentioned. If that at least angers you in any way... And it has apparently. It has apparently angered everyone already. We did a shitty job. People are furious.

Did this go up? Oh, yeah, it's up. And people are furious. And the only way to ensure that your voice is heard is to write in all capital letters in bold what game you think should be on that list. And call all four of us idiots, even though I definitely think Bioshock should have on this list i'm i'm right there with you guys

i don't want to throw the other three people on this podcast under the bus but heave ho there you go those are the tires going over your bodies oh ouch only in this only in this universe don't worry there's another dimension where it didn't happen. Yeah, so you may be asking what we're going to do with this list. The answer is we are going to do a massive two-part video edition of the Besties Game of the Year, similar to what we did last year. This year will be even better, and we're going to duke it out Sweet 16 bracket style. So that's something to look forward to as well.

The first episode of that will be up on December 23rd. Are we doing both of them? Unlike the Christmas week? No. The last one will go up on the 30th. So it's going to be a

week gap. So people will be dying to know what our picks are. Exciting. Psyched. This is also exciting. So catch it. Catch the fever. Cool. Yeah, everyone get excited.

Where can they go vote? Plant, where can they go vote? They can go vote on Polygon.com at that blog post, which you can find in the top of Polygon.com right now. Or you know what? We will throw a link in the Besties episode article so you can vote there. Perfect. Okay.

Thank you all so much for joining us for the Besties. We hope you've had some fun and hope it didn't get too highfalutin for you. You know, when you get a few brainiacs like us on the same show it tends to get a little snooty so I hope you were able to keep up with all of our hit references and it was really like Picasso at the lap in a Gille today it was it was kind of a rough one for me because like I don't know shit just like you still know things Martin reference yeah that's more I thought that was more accessible, you know? Like, king tut, you know?

People get that shit and they love it. Now I'm your watch. That's another Steve Martin reference from the hit film Shop Girl. That's good. You remember that scene? You remember that scene in fucking Claire Danes? It's like, my watch is gone. And he holds her wrist.

He's like, now I'm your watch. It's like, Steve Martin, fucking don't. Gross. Barf forever. Buckets of barf. Yeah, the link will be in the post for this podcast. Now I'm your shoe. And he like wraps himself around her foot.

His entire mouth around your foot. I'm a shoe. Oh, now I'm your foot. Oh, no. Now I'm your backpack. Oh, no, I'm a foot. Oh, no, I'm a foot. Now I'm your backpack. Get off me, Steve Martin. I'm a one crazy guy. Get out of here.

Get out of here, you weirdo. Anyway, that's going to do it for us. The besties, make sure you join us again on December 23rd. Apparently. I don't know. I guess we won't have a regular ass episode next week. So it'll go up audio also on the 23rd, so if you want to listen, you can do that as well.

But why would you do that? You have eyes. Unless you're blind, in which case, I'm sorry. On that cheery note, that's going to do it for us on the Besties. Make sure to join us again next time for the Besties. You're some of the world's best friends. Pick the world's best friends pick the world's best things besties