The Besties - The Besties pick the best games of June 2017

Episode Date: July 10, 2017

It’s gotten a little slow, but we’re still here OK, things have slowed down for game releases in June. How slow? Well, one of our games was released in May. But, we’re still here picking the best games of the month, just for you. Games discussed: Final Fantasy 14, Nier: Automata, Wolfenstein: The New Blood, Caveblazers, Cave Story +, Arms, The Surge. Theme song by Ian Dorsch Download MP3" Subscribe? Sure, you can subscribe. 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 need those proteins. The problem is because of the lactose intolerance, I can't drink milk. So the cereal, getting protein from there doesn't really work. So eggs are a great form of protein. Also, I saw this commercial that said they were incredible and edible both at the same time. So I just sort of leaned into it. You really needed to go ahead on both of those things. Anytime I see a food commercial, I'm like, I didn't say it was edible.

So in my defense, my wife made me give up bacon bacon which was having almost every single day on the egg so now it's just eggs on like a roll with hot sauce with hot sauce no all right but no bacon uh god this is boring me into this world i if only i could take you out my name is justin mcelroy and I know the best games of the month. My name is Griffin McElroy, and I know the best games of the month. My name is Chris Plant, and I know the best games of the month. My name is Russ Froschik, and I know the best games of the week. Here's the deal. My wife is sick at home, so I really can't shout.

Oh, boy. This is going to sound terrible, but based on sort of the volume levels of the podcast and how they usually kind of clock in, it would be cool if she was sick every time you recorded. And I know that's a bad thing to say. That's a terrible thing to say. It's a terrible thing to say, but I feel like completely. You would make that sacrifice?

Yes. Justin, what is this podcast? On the Besties, we talk about the latest and greatest in fashion, food, trends, web media, hiring, firing. Fidget spinners? Fidget spinners, naturally. Video games, music, concerts, live events, festivals. Festivals are huge this time of year. Hot dogs.

Hot dog technology. This week, month, we're talking about, we we're gonna really focus on video games now i was my nephew kieran was playing have you seen this 3ds uh three dimensions one screen is what he told me this was actually two screens but what kind of like weird goggles do they make you wear like the big goggles they there are he wears big goggles but he's huge into steampunk. He's eight. And I don't know if that's necessary for the technology because I was able to observe it in a sense. It gave me a severe migraine.

I had to lay down and Valerie gave me a back massage. Do you have a top hat with a bow as well? What? Oh, Russ, if you're going to say something, please make it pertinent to what we're discussing on the podcast. Please. But that is a video games this this time we're gonna focus on those they're they come a long way since pac-man uh it's a pretty slow month i think we addressed that in the last episode and i think we'll address it in the bad conversations

in this episode um can we do some honorable mentions if anybody has any i know there wasn't a surplus of playables tasty playables uh i don't have any okay um i've been i've been playing final fantasy 14 again because stormblood came out i think i probably talked about it it's funny i was trying to think about the last time i was like playing it and when i would have talked about it on the show and i actually stopped playing it last time because i was playing it and trying to tell y'all to play it and you were like no we're playing destiny and i was like oh and then fucking a thousand hours of my life disappeared um but it's really it's really good i so like i haven't gotten to the storm blood content yet it adds a couple new classes and you know the usual mmo expansion stuff but i really like that game i really like

what it does um justin and i did a Monster Factory of it yesterday, and I don't know that it was a very good sales pitch for Justin. It looks healthy with something of it, because in that hour or so, or hour and a half maybe of content I saw, it just looked like the most MMO-ass MMO humanly possible. How does it sort of differentiate itself? It's a pretty MMO-ass MMO.

I like it because I play it on PS4, and so I can Vita Remote play it really easily. It actually works really well for that. It's really smart about control. So when you use the controller, you use the what's called a crossbar, I think, where you like hold down one of the shoulder buttons and then you have access to eight buttons and it's up, down, left, right on the D pad and triangle, circle, square X. And so you can map different commands and macros or spells and attacks and shit to that one. And then you have another one if you hold down left trigger. then if you hold down both then you have an access to another bar and so like it gives you access to like all this shit you need to play an mmo i i think i'm mostly

fascinated in like how well they facilitated that um it also like at times like feels like a final fantasy game like there is a story in the game and uh really good cut scenes um and the world is like the world is really interesting um it has a cool way of handling classes where you can switch classes basically at will whenever you want and so like uh there's a you know black mage class but then you can switch to the fishing class with like the press of a button and um it it sounds like it'd be really complicated because because each class has its own like gear sets and shit like that. But, um, the, again, the game is like really smart about how it manages those into lists and makes it really seamless to just like press a button.

And I go from being my white mage character to my archer character and like, um, yeah, it's just like, I don't know. It's a fun, it's a fun world to just explore on the, uh, when I'm just in the living room chilling and playing with the Vita. Not to focus too much on this, one question before we close this out. I don't know if you're familiar with my TTC grading system for JRPGs. I saw you tweet about this, and I'm excited to hear your thoughts. TTC stands for Time to Crystal.

Yeah. And generally, the rule of thumb is the sooner the crystal in the game the sooner they ran out of fucking ideas wow so so what is the ttc and i mean it's like 15 15 seconds like you make your character and then you jump into a cut scene with a crystal in it um yeah it's it is it's very much like that but like i mean that's still my jam i still get excited to see a big crystal it's you know one of the But like, I mean, that's still my jam. I still get excited to see a big crystal. It's one of the prettiest rocks that there are. Amen.

Okay, anyone else play anything of note? I mean, I just looked. I've logged about 70 hours into Plunkbat at this point. It's like all I do now. It's fucking awesome. Wait, is that what we're calling it now? I really prefer PUBG. PUBG is much better.

Wait, what was the first one? Klubger? Plunkbat. Player Unknown Battlegrounds. Brendan's Battlegrounds. Brendan's Battlegrounds. I won my first game, and I thought that I would be able to be done with it. The game really stresses me the fuck out, and I thought, oh, I'll win my first solo game,

and then just feel this relief. I beat the game and be able to walk away from it, but've i my interest in it has only kind of it's only kind of grown that game is so phenomenal yeah i want more clothing i've been playing in uh you should take care of that rusty recording a podcast for crying out loud uh i've been uh uh i've been playing more Nier Automata. Excellent game, Nier Automata. Jesus. Yeah, let's talk about it. I don't wanna talk about it more,

but I gave up on that game at a certain point cause I was getting kind of bored by it. And then I pushed on until I finished the first time and then started getting into the second play through. And Hachimachi, it's just such, they don't nail it. It's not a perfectly executed idea, but the idea of like replaying a game and like recontextualizing almost everything you do in the first playthrough is like so super fascinating.

And it really, I'm just adoring it. Again, mechanically, I don't think it's like, it starts to get a little dull by the second playthrough, even though your character has very different mechanics. There's, like, a hacking minigame that's, like, an insta-kill with area of effect. If you can pull it off successfully, it just, like, gets a little old and doesn't really flow in the battle the way that other stuff does. So that, like, it gets a little old.

way that other stuff does um so that like it gets a little old um but like seeing the story stuff happen and seeing that recontextualize and seeing it change is like it's like really really interesting and it's also smart in that the second time you play through you have all your items for the first one which eliminates a lot of like the garbage you wouldn't want to do twice like someone has like three esoteric items. They need to make medicine. You're like, Oh fuck you. I have 99 of those.

Hold on. Let me hear. I probably dropped some on my way over here. Like no problem. Um, which is really cool. And near automaton is an excellent video game. And it is your second playthrough.

Yeah. I'm a few hours. I can't wait for us to talk about your third, fourth, and fifth playthrough. No. At this point, we catch the fever. Should I even say that I'm playing Wolfenstein The New Order, or is that, I mean, the statute of limitations?

I never played The New Order, actually. Wait, is that the DLC, or is that the... That's the original. Oh, no, I played the original. I mean, the original, like, new game that came out, what, 2015 or so? Great great game good wait you played that before right i got to the train part that everybody talked about and i was like this is so fucking cool and then like i don't know man shooters like this aren't my jam i recognize completely how fucking like well made they are i kind of had a similar thing with doom where i played about um i played like a few hours of it and i was like this is fucking great yeah and then i kind of stopped playing it

um but uh it's it's really good i i i don't know what else to say that wasn't said about it two years ago but seeing that trailer for the the new game like made me realize like okay i need to go back and play i've been talking to nick about it because him and pat uh i have been like leading these long discussions about how great this two-year-old game is uh and how there's this weird zeitgeist of like everybody one like coming home from e3 getting home and sitting down at their ps4 and reinstalling wolf and sign um but yeah it's really good okay i don't know man it's very good it's an excellent video game i kind of want to go back and play it again now too

now i say that let me install it i'll be back bye juice okay um so have been slow this month has anybody played anything good on phone grinder which is a very good game if you want that kind of thing that's the one you didn't enjoy a month ago right no i still i still enjoy it i enjoy it every day

i play it every single day oh yeah i'm sorry i was conflating with the other fire emblem yeah that one sucked um so let's start talking about our shit uh i'll go first the game that i'm bringing and again we should preface this by saying like it's pretty dry this month we've already said that before this is a good game why are you doing this this is a good game but i wanted to bring this game and you're already you're short any other month and this game would not make my list even wow i would say it's a very good game it's enjoyable i'm glad you're the one who brought it it's a good pitch so far well the alternative is not robust like it was either this or cave

story for me okay so um the game is called cave blazers uh chris plant uh direct right did i get the game name i just gotta laugh it's a pretty goofy name it makes me feel like i know that this isn't the intent but the fact that this in cave story came out the same It makes me feel like, I know that this isn't the intent, but the fact that this and Cave Story came out the same month made me feel like somebody's like, it's a big month for Cave Story, huh? Well, it's time to blaze this cave. I can jump that. 420 Blazing. Okay, so the game is Cave Blazers.

It's basically Spelunky on easy mode. Is a fair kind of top. Wait, shut up. Plan. I can't wait for plan to just take your fucking thesis apart dude so no put it out there so please just tell me about the fucking you're a little man you run around in caves and you've got bombs and you've got weapons and you try to survive and you go deep down and you get gems and you use the gems to buy stuff and if it starts sounding like spunky

that's because it's very similar to spunky but um unlike spunky which is incredibly punishing as everyone on this podcast knows and some of you quit almost immediately um this game allows you a lot more leeway so you can for example fall on some spikes and not die instantly or get hit by a dude and not die instantly um so it's definitely more welcoming and lighthearted and, and just like easier on that front. It does, unlike Spelunky, it does have a like loot based system, which has like weapons that have passive abilities and stats and like kind of a quasi weapon upgrade system. So it's like a little more RPG than Spelunky is is which is like pretty core uh platformer but um i mean again it's it is enjoyable and light-hearted but like coming off of sponky and coming off of like dead cells for

example which this also has a lot of sharing dna of uh between the two games this is obviously like a very passable cute little fun game um but not like an earth shattering moment in my life. Chris, you want to pick up the ball here? Put it on PC. So this is not really the game at all. But what do you mean? It's I'll give you credit like for the first 30 minutes. I think it's definitely the thing you're describing.

OK, I don't I don't think it's perfect by any means. So I will I will grant you that. But I would say it looks, when you start it, like crappy Spelunky. Like, it is none of the character of Spelunky. I never call it crappy, for the record. Yeah, no, it looks like a really bad knockoff, to be really honest. And the characters are much smaller. It has a weird sense of perspective.

And you do start off like in a temple the song that is like playing at the beginning feels like it wants to be splunky there's cutesy dialogue that is not good they managed to like have a crappy dick joke in the first five minutes which i think is like most of the dialogue in the game that's my ttdj um is a really important metric for me so so there's that right but then once you start the game um it feels like more of a mishmash of all of these i guess you could call them roguelikes that have fall like followed spelunky so i think there's a lot of rogue legacy here i think there's i mean just this like crowd of Steam games feels like it influenced this thing.

So it's more of, it looks like Spelunky, but the reality is it's something of the greatest hits. So when Russ says it's like easier, I don't think the game itself is easier. I think like you just don't die right away. Like it's still punishing. The difference is there are more things to kill you and therefore you have like life. And there's more things to kill you and therefore you have like life and there's more stuff built there are perks that you acquire throughout the uh throughout the game they're represented by these little circles that you'll tap and it'll grant you plus five melee or plus five ranged attack or it'll give you special abilities like oh every time you fire an arrow

it also fires a lightning bolt um and the more you play from what i can tell the more you're playing the more advanced these seem to be getting it's really weird how the unlock system works um and then also the more you play and the further you progress the more starting perks you unlock so at the beginning you start with like i think like two bombs and those are your perks uh you might get a melee thing where it's at the beginning you start with like i think like two bombs and those are your perks uh you might get a melee thing where it's like well now you start with plus five melee and this special weapon or you start with only 80 health but you get a weapon that every 10 kills it like increases your strength um so it becomes much more of like okay when i go in here i'm not necessarily more

powerful but i can have like different methods of how i play through um the thing that's kind of a bummer for me so far is one there are multiple bosses there are bosses between each kind of area so you'll have two stages and then a boss and the bosses are not ideal they're like mega man bosses yeah yeah they're just not like super well crafted yeah they're not they're like they don't really make sense in terms of how you read them like to develop a strategy against them i found that like they're kind of unright like unreliable to fight against and the other thing is there's some really cool weapons if you play quite a bit, that can really change the game. There's one that you fire arrows most of the time as your long range.

But there is a machine gun that you can get that is so powerful that it knocks you back. So if you fire at the floor, you can essentially fly. It's like Super Crate Box. Yeah, it totally changes the game. um yeah it's like super crate box yeah it totally changes the game but unlike spelunky which has like this kind of small set of things and you know like well eventually i'm gonna get some of this stuff i have had that once and you know a number of hours of play so i i think like it russ is right and that like comparing it to spelunky is really gonna like not do it justice because the things that spelunky does really well it doesn't um but i think it's also trying a lot of different things that spelunky had no interest in like oh how do we create like a roguelike where

while you're playing through you're getting like increasingly powerful buffs, which was never a spunky thing to begin with. So I think it's pretty good. I just think comparing it against one of the top three video games ever made. Yeah, it's never going to fare well in that comparison. Yeah, it's Doom. And it's its own fault. It really draws that comparison. It borrows a hell of a lot.

From the moment you start it but ultimately it's much if you if it had any other visual design i don't think like that would be the first comparison that would be made um especially if like it's weird like you start with the with uh bombs and they become like almost useless immediately. Yeah. It didn't seem unlike Spunky. It didn't seem like balance was like a crucial concern for the developers. No.

But I mean, I think it's like five or ten bucks. I feel like it was. Oh, yeah. No, no. I would say from a bang for your buck perspective, it's totally worth it. Yeah. I find it to be a really good pre or post PUBG game. A cool down game? A chill out tent?

It is a chill out game. It's so fun. But once I play a round of it, I'm like, I do not want to play that for another 24 hours. And then I'm excited the next time I turn on my PC. Let's just talk about PUBG. I play it at like 1030 after my wife and my baby are asleep. And I play it for like an hour. And uh wife and my baby are asleep and i play it for like an hour and then i go to sleep and it is not a good pre-sleep i usually like lay in bed for

like 15 minutes just sort of unpacking uh the things i could have done better um hey that sounds like my every day um i can i i should go next i feel like because there's like a kind of a connective kind of a connective tissue here um caves yeah i'm doing caves i'm doing you also reference like a machine gun powerful enough to let you fly and like that's the cave story thing also so um i'm doing cave story plus it is the new version of cave story that is up on switch um and i think like i want to start off talking about like what's new in this version, because if you've played Cave Story, like there's not a lot here that is is new. It's got, you know, remastered graphics, but like they were already like pretty sharp pixel graphics before. And so Cave Story Plus came out on 3DS originally.

So, no, there was Cave Story 3D, which was the 3DS version. And that was fully new 3D graphics. And it's sort of a divisive entry of this game, the way it was ported, just like because it is 3D graphics. And so there are some like feel differences. And this is a game that it requires like absolute precision at all times because it gets fucking super difficult um but let me just clarify real quick so cave story plus came out on pc and mac in 2011 um and that's really what the graphics that you're looking at in this game yeah more or less um but there's also some additional like extra modes that are sort of like uh there's like bonus challenges

uh like a time trial of the very last dungeon in the game which is like impossible um and a few other things the the big thing that's going to be new that's not here at launch but later this summer they're adding uh local co-op for the first time where he plays curly brace who is one of the characters from the game um and i think that's going to be really fucking fun. I love Crowley. But ultimately, there's not like a ton of new stuff here. And I feel like I should couch that by saying it's 30 bucks. And it's that's you. It started out as like a freeware game.

You can still find that freeware version for free on your PC. I have played it a couple of times now. The most on 3DS, not the Cave Story 3D version, but just the eShop version. Again, this game has been like fucking everywhere and and you can find it on that that e-shop version for 3ds for probably like i don't know not very much money certainly not 30 bucks actually that may have been a ds game that i you mean the original cave story non-3ds non-3d cave story yeah i think it might have been a yeah so like all that said like um i

for for me like i love the switch and i just want to play my favorite games on it and cave stories like top 10 all-time best games ever made in my opinion interesting um can i share a secret in a beef with you uh yes but i do also want to actually talk about what the fucking game is because i've never played it uh so cave story is a a um to call it retro i feel like is a little bit dismissive um but it it it feels like um uh like an nes sort of adventure platformer action game uh that didn't get made because like it's it's it would have been the most ambitious nes game ever made um and that's also kind of unfair because it's not exactly like NES graphics, but whatever. And it is a game in which you find different weapons and run around and you blast stuff.

And what's great about it is that the world is so terrific. It takes place on this island that are sort of inhabited by these rabbit creatures and you are a robot and nobody really knows how you got there and in sort of exploring how you got there and what the secret of this island is um you you sort of unravel the story of the game and it's surprisingly like really great and the characters are all really memorable um but like the great thing about it is the feel of this game and it's like it's unlike anything like um that that has been made sort of in this vein it is so fucking tight like um especially once you get later on in the game and you have like a slew

of different weapons um that you can collect and upgrades for those weapons are handled by whenever you kill an enemy uh some of the time they'll drop experience uh which shows up as like little triangles um and as you collect it your weapons power up but if you get hit the weapon that you have equipped uh will lose some experience um so you're constantly like trying to choose like what you want to have equipped whenever you pick up these things and like what your favorite weapons are and what you want to keep boosted but then when you have those weapons equipped you have to be like extra careful like it's really smart about that but eventually sorry i just want to make justice so you're it's interesting griffin that you haven't brought

up metroid which i think is a yeah so it's a lot of dna sharing um it does but it's not exactly a metroidvania game like there's no like it's more linear it's a metroid it is linear but there's also like some exploit there's like a lot of exploration that you can do um the like like a megaman x when you think about it because it's like some replay and some hidden exploration that you can do um the like a megaman x when you think about it because megaman x has like some replay and some hidden areas that you go back to yeah but it's not mission-based it is uh one like cohesive world yeah um where where it gets really there's there's a lot of like collectibles collectibles and a lot of secrets and like a branching storyline and there are um items that you can get there's like a there's a system kind of like the

bigger on sword trading where you can like trade in a weapon at a certain point in the game but if you don't you can hang on to your shittier weapon and take it further into the game and then trade it for something better off uh better later on and um there's there's a lot of stuff like that there's a lot of like it feels like there are like secrets hidden everywhere and like it feels like you can feel the like love that this developer had as they were making this game and one last thing about like the feel of it eventually you get like a booster like a jump booster um and like once you get that the game just turns like batshit like bananas like it it turns into this like thrilling really really really challenging but in a really fair like i've got to fucking try that one more time way culminating in if you like play

the game and get the the the good ending uh in a final level that i referenced earlier on that is like this harrowing, like, painful dungeon that I've only beaten one time. And when I did, it was, like, one of the best video game experiences of my whole life. And it's, I don't know, it's just a really polished, really clever, really, really, really charming platformer. I think it has a lot sort of in,

it kind of reminds me of how, like, Shovel Knight treated me of just like it's not just a lazy retro game where it's just like oh we made duck tales it's like got its own shit or stardew valley like it yeah exactly dude that was obsessed with these sorts of games but basically put his own spin on it and made it and and and it's it's kind of weird talking about it right because it's nothing new like this game came out forever ago um but i don't know that i've talked about it on the show before and like i just i adore the hell out of this game i again maybe if you haven't played it 30 bucks is a good price to get in but like i don't necessarily know that there's enough justification for you to have

to get it on the switch right like there's a push from nicalis to say like oh this is the definitive edition and it's like it doesn't it really really doesn't make an argument that like if you have it like the pickup would make like for you mentioned like 30 and you it may be fair if you haven't played it like when the assumption be that it's been out on so many platforms at this point that the only audience would be people who haven't played it i mean like you know i mean like it doesn't seem like a first time port where everybody's scrambling to finally get their hands on it seems like a premium for people who you know it's a premium price for people who just apparently took the

last five or six years off in me um maybe but like you didn't you didn't play it like i played it and i bought it just because like i like again like i am sort of obsessive about like having all of my my faves on a switch like yeah this is my first time playing it but if you paid 30 for it then that was a good price right like yeah i guess so that that it's if you're somebody who like really really wants it on this i don't know it just doesn't seem like i don't know it's not a great price as something who's playing it for the first time it's a it is it's it's it's weirdly a lot like it's um i mean you look at like the e-shop prices for nintendo so like you can buy super mario world one of the greatest games ever made for eight dollars on the wii u right now just as an example so it's like

it's a tough sell i want to i want to hear what you think of the game russ since you're playing it for the first time i actually saw your little notification it's weird playing a nintendo game and seeing like a notification from my friends that other people are doing things right it's not just it's not just weird that i'm getting notifications on a nintendo console it's weird that like other people somewhere underneath that that big beautiful moon at the same time as we are playing video games and then like it's it's still a very novel experience to me but what do you think of it so um yeah as i i've i'd played probably like 20 minutes in in in uh in the past years but this is the first time i'm really digging into it and i would say i'm probably about three quarters of the way through at this point um i think it's very good um but i also think that time has not been super kind in the sense that so many people since this game came out have tackled this genre, especially in the last three or four years, that the refinements that have been made to every aspect, whether it's like certain how the guns feel how the upgrades feel how the whatever feels

i feel like this lags behind a little bit just by nature of it being a 12 year old game at this point um i like the story stuff i think it's i'm like invested and i think there's a lot of humor and the characters are engaging and interesting but again it's like yeah i mean i'm liking it but again it's that 30 30 price is just pretty high um for um i think what is like should be 20 and i think i'd be very happy about it um i don't want to think more more more fair because the other option of that is the other flip side of my dumb argument is if you haven't bought it yet you maybe not aren't dying to play it and $30 may not be the price to finally unless you have a switch and you're desperate for some game to play on which i i know a lot

of people are yeah i was talking to plan about this earlier i think part of the reason um uh that this game is is so well regarded again i don't want to take anything away from it it's a it's a very good game but a it's it's it's just like it's hard for me to sort of be objective about it because like i i kind of feel the same way about it that i feel like undertale like undertale is going to come out on vita and i'm going to play it again and when i play it again i'm going to be playing it the same way i played cave story which is like i know where all the secrets are and it's like um it's like how i used to watch my own home movies when i was a little kid just because like i i knew what to expect yeah and i knew you had a lot of enjoyment out of it i think i think there's two

things one when the game came out and i just checked i think it was 2004 when the original cave story came out as you said it was a freeware game and like unquestionably the best freeware game that has ever been released at that point like no not even close it crushed everything it was like a like a nintendo quality game that was just released for free on the pc and you could just download for free it was amazing um and so i think that is part of it where like no one had any expectations and it came out it was like holy shit this is much better than we all thought and and the other thing is like in the way that like when plant um and i played mother uh earthbound which i had never played before and planted played it when he was a little kid and it was a big part of his childhood

and then when i played it several years later and like it did almost nothing for me um it just i think it has to do with like where your brain is at that point. You listen to Pearl Jam when you were growing up. You love Pearl Jam when you're an adult. I think it really is partly that as well. Yeah, I have found everything around it very frustrating. I'm more frustrated with game critics than I am with the game. But this was a thing where I loved Kyro Blaster or Kyro Kyro Blaster. Yeah, the same developer. yeah yeah that game was fantastic and i've always wanted to play cave story and for whatever reason

i didn't prioritize it um and this came out and i saw so many people uh recommending that like oh this is a definitive edition you got it is it. It's going to be something that you'll love on your Switch. It's so fantastic. And I completely agree with both of you. I think I can see how it was wonderful at the time, especially as something that was free. But, like, wow, does it get off to a slow start. And wow, does the story not really make any sense for a while?

It takes a bit, yeah. And I don't think it's bad. Like, I'm still going to finish it. But it was a weird thing for something to be so, like, unflinchingly endorsed and then to, like, sink 30 bucks into it, which is not cheap. Right. And for it to be like, yeah, this feels like it would have been a good game for free at that time.

I am super jazzed to play more. But yeah, it's a bit of a bummer because it does feel like. Yeah, I I'm not going to have the same emotional feeling that people have for this game as those, as the people who played it a long time ago. And I think this release is kind of built off that. I mean, so many of the people that I've seen on Twitter who are playing it are not even like,

I don't even know if they're playing the game, but like my stream has been bombarded with photos of people who bought the box copy that has like the special mini soundtrack CD. Well, that's fucking great um yeah yeah i'm so i have a notification set up for the undertale stuff that got announced at e3 with the like locket that plays music like that nostalgia play is like yeah i'm i'm here for it for sure i i think i guess i wanted to talk about it on this episode just to say like i think it's absolutely a game worth playing even if it's not in this version although i will say like having on switch uh is it it's another thing that is good about uh but it's the same thing you find on uh ds and on vita where i'm pretty sure it

also is is that like it's really good for portable play also especially since again that last level is so fucking difficult and you will bash your head against it for a while. And it's broken down into like 10 second increments where you die instantly. You're like, all right, one more try, one more try. And like, I haven't beaten it yet on Switch. And you can't skip the cut scenes and it drives me nuts. Every time I die, I have to watch it again. I mean, you could make the the talking go faster but those two dinosaurs

keep killing me and i really want to jump off of that's not that's not the final cut scene but i know it's not it's just i don't want to hear them talk anymore yeah it's it's a really good portable game so uh just just go play cave story get don't if you don't want to spend 30 bucks go get the fucking free version and play it because i think it's a i think it's a really good um important game uh do we want to skip to halftime i i was hoping maybe we could circle back on e3 stuff and see if anybody played anything really cool really really cool i played super mario odyssey yesterday what yep it was spectacular I got to play it at E3, and I really want to hear what Russ says about it. There was an event in New York City,

and Nintendo was showing off basically their E3 slate, which included Fire Emblem Warriors and the new Metroid game on 3DS. Another Fire Emblem game? Fucking finally. I know. Scratching that itch. But I played some Mario Odyssey,

and the one thing that um you know when i watched the trailer uh that was released during e3 and before that i was like okay this looks like a very enjoyable mario game like i think i'm really gonna dig it um but it didn't like i was like excited about it but in the way i'm excited about every single mario game that comes out and within three seconds of picking up the controller and playing mario odyssey i was like oh this is some next level shit yeah um there's just the the i don't i don't know if it came through in the trailer for folks like you didn't get a chance to play it but like it feels fucking phenomenal it feels amazing

like in the way that like your mind was blown when you first controlled mario in mario 64 and like holy shit i can slide down the banister like there's like 16 of those insane moves that you can pull off just with like i'm gonna hold down the hat throw button a little longer and the hat will like float there and then i could just run in and bounce off of it there's like a ton of those like new moves that like allow you to get around the world in really interesting fluid ways that i was like oh i can't fucking wait i i checked out the game uh we had a few appointments for it um at e3 because there was like some judges stuff and we had a video appointment and but the first time i showed up i went with nick who was like a huge like mario fan and i mean i am too but like he specifically sat

down and like tested out all of these moves that have been possible in 3d mario games in the past right so like uh super mario galaxy like all of the different jumps you can do like the spin the weird spin jump that like is deep arcana like not surface level jump that you get like everything you could think of that you have been able to do in mario games is like represented here and like watching his delight in that made me think like this this game is going to be fucking excellent yeah i loved it yeah it's gonna be another excellent game is going to be spider-man a playstation 4 title exclusive to the playstation 4 spider-man games have had a checkered past i'll be the first to admit but what was the last good one i mean there's there's like one great one and then two pretty good ones i kind of like the cel-shaded one

incorrect there uh there's no open world in that and no swinging around so no there was an open world cel-shaded one amazing spider-man i think yeah no amazing spider-man was not open world that's the one we switched between venom and spider-man um and that was it was ultimate Spider-Man. It was Ultimate Spider-Man. Yeah, I like that one. That one had some okay stuff. But Web of Shadows was probably the last. With the weird side stories. Yeah, that's when we fought Wolverine.

No, no. That's Shattered Dimensions. They've made a lot of these. Yeah, I've made a lot of them. None't they? Yeah, I made a lot of them. None of them have been great, except for Web of Shadows, which I think is legitimately a great game where they did a great job with the combat and the swinging. And from what I saw at the, I saw sort of an extended demo

from what you saw at the press conference, I feel very good about it. They are going in, obviously they're promoting it a heck of a lot more than any Spider-Man previously, so it's like they've definitely got confidence about it. They are going in, obviously they're promoting it a heck of a lot more than any Spider-Man previously. So it's like they definitely got confidence behind it. And in a way it's sort of inevitable. Like if you finally, it's a great character who should be very fun to be and inhabit.

And if you put a chunk of money behind it and a developer that really knows what they're doing, like surprise, it's excellent. money behind it and a developer that really knows what they're doing like surprise it's excellent but um the web stuff looked great which is essential um it's all connecting to real buildings um which is is cool they have the combat looks really neat there's like a lot of instances in the world where you can like do uh sort of one-off activities pull a girder down on somebody or or or whatever. And you saw some of those in the demo, but we also saw different ones

in the extended demo that we saw, which is cool. What they wouldn't go into and what I'm sort of still sort of questioning is, I think it's easy to nail, not easy, I don't remember if I ever made a fucking game, but like,

I think it's easier, easier to nail the big set piece moments, especially because they're in involving some cut scenes. But like the day to day living as Spider-Man is a game that like is something that a lot of games have struggled with. Amazing Spider-Man 2 notably had a meter that anytime you, you heard about every crime in Manhattan, and if you didn't swing across the entirety of Manhattan to stop that crime, it increased your notoriety,

and then eventually people would start attacking you if your notoriety got, and including like erecting huge energy nets to catch you in and just ruin swinging. If you just didn't help anyone, like if you were passive, it would do that. And it's not even like helping anyone. It's like, if you don't want to do for the fifth time,

a freaking, uh, uh, uh, you know, stopping a car hijacking or whatever for the 30th time, then, uh,

uh, then you are penalized for that so that was not great but they're not talking about it so that's like the last sort of big question mark i have but um overall it looks really good i'm very excited about it i do like um the sunset overdrive a hell of a lot yeah there's a lot of that in it for sure that's what it looked like yeah uh the new monster hunter looks really good i saw a presentation for that um oh juice you could have talked about that in honorable mentions you've been playing generations or at least you were back when we were at e3 yeah did you stop please tell me you stopped please god i'm out i can't y'all that's a weird one i just i had for a week

two people who've played probably hundreds of hours of that game. And I, it's just, it's, and they helped walk me through those beginning stages, but there is a ludicrous amount of stuff that you just have to Google. I mean, like you just have to constantly be referencing outside materials. And I'm very optimistic that in the next one they they can fix that but it seems honestly like these games have a long running history and it seems like they just it's there's so much that they've been building they've been building and building and building and building and building on like every time a new game comes out they add

five new systems onto what the last game had and after a decade of that it's just like y'all need to fucking stop like y'all need to like reboot your shit i think a little bit because it is just it is it is um even trying to teach justin some of the basics i was like okay yeah this is i understand if you want to quit like i got to teach you how to use the fucking like palico trading service to get extra honey to make mega potions between missions like come on um can uh chris did you see anything hot i feel like we need to get back into it but um i know you were also hitting the ground i feel like i did but now i'm not remembering any of it like no games it was all trailers for me i i felt like

every appointment i went into it was like that spider-man thing where they're like hey remember that thing you just saw well here it is again with an extra 30 seconds and a little bit different um i i i i i'm excited about spider-Man. I was not super impressed by the Wolfenstein demo, which was weird and disappointing. I'm trying to get something that I really liked that I actually played.

Apart from Mario. Yeah, I don't know. Were you not over the movie about Mario? Was I not over the... Oh, you know what I did play that I liked a lot? I played Crdown and that was that's actually a good example okay so so let me let me set this stage real quick a crackdown from home like watching from home watching the streams as they were happening looked like pretty much dog shit like it looked like dog shit it

looks like a fucking 360 game like it looks so much worse than it plays yeah so how does it how is it different from i guess crackdown one in terms of playability so it is like how you remember crackdown one not like how crackdown one actually is because if you go back and play it which i did before you three yeah it does not hold up so well interesting um but it it feels like how you remember it i it it's like the there's all these new aerial moves and the weapons are just wackier um and more powerful um and the whole idea of like hunting down the whatever the various boss agility orbs and oh that too the agility orbs is still there but hunting down the various bosses seems interesting i like you couldn't do that in the demo they showed

some of the behind closed doors stuff um but they also just have more powerful bosses so now it's like this chaos mechanic where if you cause enough mayhem in a certain area it will attract the big big boss of of that like zone um and that can be in the demo they showed a person i was a woman and like i i don't know even what it was like a hovering plane thing that was humongous and is firing missiles at you and if you don't take out her i guess lieutenants and their chief, then all of those mini gangs attack you. So the whole idea is like, if you want at the beginning, you can blow everything up and attract the ire of this super boss and try to fight them and all these gangs at the same time. Or you can pick off, you know, the different layers of the gang and then absorb some of their powers or skills or whatever um and then go and take the big boss on which i think is like a good twist

sounds like some mercenaries original yeah yeah it is the original um i'm sorry is the building destruction stuff gone completely yeah that's that's in the multiplayer mode uh which is there is yeah so the multiplayer mode so confusing what i in the multiplayer mode uh which is there is yeah so the multiplayer mode so confusing what i understand the multiplayer mode is being made by uh dave jones and like he was the one who was i believe the original director on crackdown um and then the single player is being made by sumo who is like secretly one of the best third-party developers like in the business um they're the people who made sonic racing transformed and the other game which are great digital yeah um they've made a number of things and apparently they're just like

a behemoth now like quietly making all these games for other publishers. But yeah, I'm super duper jazzed about it. I don't know what Microsoft's deal was because the rollout could not have been worse. Like they the whole joy of the game would be like oh just upload 20 minutes to show that it is more crackdown that's what people will be excited about and their model was here's a trailer that doesn't really show it at all plus it kind of makes it look crappy there were some there were some fucking weird sales pitches for games like really and like crew 2 was like y'all didn't show anything capture footage of crackdown like yeah they we at

the microsoft event they were like yeah so we have all these capture devices set up you can't use it for crackdown though but you can shoot it off of the tv so it already doesn't look you know like it it would benefit from being seen in 4k but chris doesn't that isn't that just like a well i mean sure it looked bad you're looking at the course i really don't think the game is that bad looking when you're playing it like well i mean on their xbox one x prototypes or whatever um but yeah i i thought it was like super fun and it was i just don't know what microsoft steel is like come on you you you don't have that much you do have a game that seems to be genuinely good why would you not dedicate time to like actually showing that off um but i don't know man that that company just

it is one ginormous uh question mark of a sales pitch. Also, I play Agents of Mayhem, and they ruin Saints Row, and it's going to be a very bad entertainment product. The end. Let's talk about it again. Can I just say one bit from it, though? Just one bit to sort of illustrate my issues. There was after the, I'm sorry, I only played like an hour of it, and if you worked on that game and you're listening to this podcast,

I'm sorry, it was just very not enjoyable. Many apologies, but I love Saints saints row and this was not that and except they're kind of trying like in the mission i played the big boss of the level was like basically justin bieber and it's like oh fucking finally that somebody's making fun of justin bieber but like that that was one big thing but then at the end there there was like a cut scene sort of sizzle reel and one of the shots was a woman with a very large gun who grabs her crotch and just yells

tell it to the clam and I just like this game this franchise missed something it missed something it's a totally different team now, right? I mean, it's technically as I understand it, a lot of those now right i mean i mean it's technically i understand

a lot of those folks have have done what i have heard but um anyway angels of mayhem hugely underwhelming who knows maybe it will be better but it just did not inspire any feelings and i watched the entire thing like utterly stone-faced um and yeah the crew 2 is going to be a redemption story on like any other you ever seen you turn your car into a boat or a plane at any point that's pretty great um who's going next um i'll go really quick russ i i think you played this griffin i know that you played a little bit but i'm gonna talk a little arms oh yeah on switch um i'll keep it brief because I am no fighting game expert. But for anybody who doesn't know what this game is,

it's Nintendo's take on the Mario... On the Mario? It's Nintendo's fighting game equivalent of Mario Kart is to racing games. That's not a real sentence, but I tried. And I think it was actually made by the Mario Kart 8 team. Is that right? It feels like it. I'm not sure, but it does feel like it.

But, yeah, it's 1v1, and each of the characters has wacky arms that have, they, like, are, like, springs or ribbons. Isn't there a 2v2 mode? I thought there was a 2v2. Oh. I think you might be right, yeah. Okay, anyway. Obviously, I have not played much of that mode. But you can either play it using the motion controls or just like traditional.

And you throw one arm at a time. And you can steer the direction of those arms. And you can give those arms different traits. So you could have a character who has one arm that is kind of like a shield that is very slow and then if with another tap will then suddenly like home in on uh their rival you could have one that is like a series of like five little missiles that separate but they have like bad aim you could have wrecking balls that are really powerful if they hit you but really easy to dodge etc etc and there's like a bit

of like rock paper scissors going on certain are like style of arms can block other ones there is a grab mechanic that can be broken up by punching it that it's very very familiar fighting game territory what i enjoyed about it uh as somebody who really struggled to get into injustice mostly because i felt humiliated by the end of the tutorial um was that i felt like after playing through the campaign a couple times, which is in fighting game tradition, very short, I had an idea of like how to get better. I like had a sense of what the mechanics were and that I could learn them and I could improve. i was enjoying just using different characters the art style and weirdly just the variety of fighting mechanic like styles for the characters and the ease of the game reminded me of power stone even though they're very different but it i just kept getting that sense of that it felt like

a game sega would have made at their peak um so yeah it's very good it is i am really curious to see what it's like once competitive gaming gets a hold of it um do you think there's really gonna be a scene i don't know that it's really gonna take off with the competitive gaming scene you know like i don't put any game from having a scene you know like, like I think Nintendo is eager for something like that to happen. I don't know if like serious competitive gaming, but I think it wants people excited about it. I think it just kind of feels to me like the sort of game that I, again,

and what I've played, I have enjoyed, like it's not a bad game, but the sort of game that comes out very close to a console's launch that three years after the console has been out, 100 forgot it existed like remember phantavision nope yeah i think that is fair i also think it's up to them to decide if that's the case like your first shot at a fighting game i don't think is ever going to be flawless yeah um so i am curious what they do to make it feel more precise with uh the sequel that would be my biggest complaint is well i definitely feel like i'm

like developing a certain level of skill i never quite feel like i am doing exactly what i'm intending to do which is an issue for a game like this um but i also really don't know how much of that is my own fault like my instinct with a fighting game is to blame myself which is an issue for a game like this. But I also really don't know how much of that is my own fault. My instinct with a fighting game is to blame myself, which is not healthy, but that's just the point that I've gotten with the genre. Sounds like my everyday life. So it's good.

It's also just very cute. The characters in the audience at the fights will cosplay as you or the person you're fighting um the the final final boss at least well i don't even know there might be more i have spoilerinos though so much what i i don't think it's a huge spoiler you know it's okay i think it's a small thing especially because like i don't know people is it master is it master hand is it master hand no but it is like a cute throwback i don't know if it's on purpose or not it's basically arms goro for mortal combat like the whole time you're fighting somebody with two arms and then you have to fight somebody with multiple arms and let me tell you not easy um i spent a lot of time i was i played through a good chunk of it at my in-laws and

just quietly in my wife's childhood bedroom cursing uh my nintendo switch as i tried to beat this stupid boss um yeah it's good i don't know if i can like recommend people rush out to get it if they're not already the type of people who are excited about it. But it's certainly not a bad game. Just to close it out, why is it called ARMS? So the thing about it is ARMS is actually an acronym for a really mustache. So Justin, what game did you bring? bring yeah let's move it on i brought you work workshop it in your own time plant um uh my game and i touched on it last month because it was

released in may sorry it june sucked um is the surge which i actually fun story uh hard deleted from my playstation 4 straight up removed it fury deleted the surge from my playstation 4 have you ever broken a disc justin i feel like you're the type of person who's like broken a disc at some point i have like thrown a disc i have not broken a disc i broke controller two controllers in dark souls oh literally just like chucked it at the wall fuck this what was that smoke and what's his name you know you know in orlando you know justin's feelings about it it made buttons stick it made my buttons on the controller stick and the usb charger doesn't fit unless the controller is like laying perfectly still or else it just falls out but i won't buy new controllers

because I had a tantrum and I should be a grownup and not have to live with the repercussions of my decisions. It's a good lesson. But okay, so the Surge I got, June was so bad that I reinstalled this game that I hate deleted. And I deleted it because, I deleted it not because I was frustrated by the game itself but because

it just had these little hinky things in it that where you would lose big chunks of time um because of like bugs or or whack crap like there was one example of like uh i fell off a ledge and it's a dark souls kind of thing sci-fi dark souls basically which is about as much table setting as you need but i fell off a ledge and on the way down i sort of like fell onto this pipe that for some unknown reason had geometry to it like it had been white box for some reason and i don't know why i have no idea why because you would never there's no going back from this pipe so i don't know why it's like a physical object but i i fell onto that and then fell off to my death and my like scrap which is sort of the stand-in for souls in this game um got stuck there on that pipe and i was carrying a ton

and it was just like you know what actually i have a better things better thing. I'm out. I'm done. So remind me what the... I know it's like sci-fi Dark Souls, but can you remind me sort of what this game is? So... Okay, so you... When the game begins, you're hired by this company called Creo, which is sort of a stand-in for like Elon Musk kind of vibe,

where it's a company that's trying to fix the earth and like climate change is trying to fix it and it's gone horribly awry. When you arrive, you are in a wheelchair and one of the first things you do in the game is find this exosuit that allows you to walk without your chair, but also, you know, provides you immense like

attack capabilities. And the way that manifests is as you meet enemies in the game, if they're wearing items, the armor or weapons that you have not come across before, you can specifically target the limb that the that armor or weapon is on and then attack it and then cut that off before you kill the or sort of as you kill the it counts as the kill but um you can cut it off and harvest it and put it on to use it as your own item uh that's also how you get materials for upgrading stuff is by finding harder enemies And that's a really cool loop You know

It's sort of D in this game leveling up is not the biggest deal Like you get a little bit more health and a little bit more stamina. But what the main thing is that it gives your exosuit more power and What that means is that you can equip uh basically everything uses power so your armor uses power your weapons use power and you have a bunch of different really powerful implants like that can generate shields or can um uh refill your health or give your weapons elemental damage and every one of those has a power cost as well so you

have to sort of be smart about which things you equip at any one given time and you really can customize something that feels good for you you remember that dope tron game monolith monolith made like i think you didn't play the trino yeah tron 2.0 was super good and it had that system where it was like yeah i remember now the first person one right yeah super yeah that was cool yeah similar sort of similar concept um there are some very neat like in-world side quests um there the combat feels really interesting because you're slow, but you have moves that are fast. So like getting around, like positioning yourself well tactically is really important. And then, you know, you, but the actual like attacking and combat is very fast.

You also have a pretty fast dodge that you can use to get out of the way of stuff. But like it doesn't have, the world itself is not as sort of engrossing as a Dark Souls thing. Like in every Dark Souls, I feel this great sense of like, man, I just got to poke around here because this is wild. And there's a lot of in-world storytelling

and the Surge isn't necessarily that. It's very industrial, sort of from top to bottom. I mean, it doesn't stray too far from that. Um, but the, the story is very cool. It,

um, the payoff is a little whack, but the story itself is cool. And there's some neat side quests and twists and turns and stuff. Um, if you want to pursue that, but honestly it was just very, I really enjoyed the,

the way it like farming in those games can, in those sorts of games can kind of be a chore. And it adds a really kind of, it adds some nice variety knowing like, okay, I'm just looking for helmets. And if you don't have a helmet, see, you can only get the armor if you attacked an armored part. And there are parts of every, almost every enemy that aren't armored. So you can get a pretty quick kill except no, but you get no sort of materials or weapons or armor uh if you

attack that unarmored part so it adds a nice sort of variety to it like i'm just gonna slice this dude up because i don't need anything he has um some really cool boss design i mean it just it's neat it's it's if you're sort of hungering for those games, which would be wild because they got pretty frequent there for a little while, we've been in a little bit of a drought as far as they go. And so if you're really hankering for one of those kinds of the games, I think The Surge is a very good one of those.

Still very hinky. I mean, not like as broken as some as some games pray that I played this year, but, um, definitely have some, has some, some hitchiness that can be pretty frustrating. Uh, but I don't know. It's, it's worthwhile. It's worth, it's worth playing. I think it's, I think it's pretty neat. Well, thankfully we have a very robust July.

Look forward to. Do we we just tons of games coming out no there aren't hold on let me look i like to look i like to do a little preview let's see um it looks like starting starting next week we got starting next week we got fucking fuck fuck oh oh splatoon comes out in july oh yeah i played that uh no i played it at um at e3 it's gonna be great also crash crash b is coming out the end of this month gotta get him in there i kind of liked is yonder that like passive um rpg where you just sort of wander around i think it might be and you just like you like farm stuff and there's no fighting it's like very peaceful if it's that i'd be down with that what the fuck is fable fortune i have no idea it's probably bad uh pyre what remind me

what is fortune oh it's a collectible card game based on fable fable's back everybody and a lot of chat about that. I don't remember what Pyre is. And then there's a Pikmin game coming out next month. Pyre's three. It's lacking. But we'll manage. Yeah, we'll figure something out. We got through this month.

August has a lot of stuff. Yeah, I'm not popping off. Pyre's in the game from Supergiant. So I'm down with that. That could be really good. And the Zelda DLC comes out tomorrow. Ooh. Yeah, there's some... Could that be its own game? Yeah, I think

Zelda could take the place of Zelda. We aren't actually done with the show. It could try, Russ. We have to pick one of these games as the best game. We didn't do that last week. Last month. I think we skipped it last month. No, we didn't do that last week last month i think we skipped it last month no we didn't we did it the very yeah we did we picked it it was we did but also we fucked up because we compared it to zelda yeah which we agreed we're gonna do by quarter so

which is fucking ridiculous persona 5 is currently holding the title for this quarter wait wait wait didn't we do pub g didn't we do pub g last time yes pub g one pub g one but it beat zelda when actually it had to go against persona 5 because no it didn't no no no no no no wait justin it wasn't persona 5 it was the masquerade game that i forgot the name of that won that month. And Griffin was really sad about it. The Sexy Brutale. Listen, we do this podcast every month. There are costs. And this is one of them.

We don't fucking remember what we did last time. But fucking what it arms probably. Okay. It doesn't be. Is PUBG. PUBG is the current reigning champion of this quarter. PUBG is the second best game of the year behind Zelle. This is easy.

Why are we fucking talking about this? Zelle is the best game. Is it better than Sexy Brutale though? Yes, of course. Come on. Next, next, next, next, next month. Move forward. Fast forward. Next episode. Okay, the next question is, what's the best game of this month? Can we just say ARMS?

Cave Story's 100 years old. Nobody liked the first game, and fucking the surge came out, and also the same year Cave Story did. Next episode. July. Do it. Is ARMS better than PUBG? No. Next episode. July. Do it. Arms. Is Arms better than PUBG? No. Next episode.

We did this. I said it. Zelda's number one. PUBG's number two. It's done. It's not number two. It's the game of the quarter. No, it's the game of the second quarter.

This podcast has been Arms. A really massive success. For Chris Plant, Russ Freshnick, Griffin McElroy, my name is Justin McElroy. Thank you for listening to the besties. We will join you again next month because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games?

Besties! Besties. Stop it. It's in the outro. Fuck you guys Besties