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

Episode Date: June 9, 2017

April showers bring good games We’re back with another surprisingly great month of games. This May brings us a few out-of-nowhere surprises and a couple of big releases. A happy May to us all! Games discussed: Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia, Card Thief, Nier Automata, The Surge, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, Injustice 2, Dead Cells, Prey. 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!

That's what you want to know is how the Half-Life thing wraps up? I know they're doing other stuff. I just want to know if I just want to hit other guys with my crowbar. I just haven't gotten enough of it. I go back and I play one and two, hoping it'll add up to three, but it hasn't. But I've got a good source on the inside. It told me that this game is going to be out this time. Is it Gabe?

Gabe is going to come out and he's going to give it to me. Is he going to do that after he juggles all of his knives? He has a bunch of knives? Do you not know about this he's just like is that a knife thing oh good oh my gosh we found the intro chris plant tell me all about gabe newell's knife collection i mean i can't say a lot about it but i can say this gabe newell has a lot of knives like big knives small knives knives that are used for like katanas? I don't know cutting up deer, I think I think it's like what is your source on this information?

I can't reveal kataku.com his power play when you go to meet with him is he's just skinning a deer on his desk you go in and Gabe Newell is just skinning a deer, I saw a video yesterday Barry Pepper filmed in his forge, and it's about is just skinning a d i saw a video yesterday uh barry pepper film in his forge

oh yeah it's about how barry pepper makes a new knife for every role he plays shit yeah even roles that don't need knives even roles that don't expect yeah when he was in monster trucks he made a knife for that role um there's that also leads me to believe there is a there is a somewhere out there. Dale Earnhardt knife that Barry Pepper made, which is would be amazing. So Half-Life 3, it's coming out on for Windows PCs through Steam. And this time they've got a real you know how each one has a cool gun that does like different stuff. This time the gun just knocks people's clothes off. Oh, no. Yeah yeah and so there's

a level adults only it's like there's like sexy there's a sexy beach level and it's just like three vita games that already have this one i know where do you think they got it from 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 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. More. Name is Ross Proctor and I know the best games of the week.

Oh no. That was some of my throat singing I tried to do. Yeah. I've been practicing my throat singing. Practice more. Practice harder. This is the besties where we talk about the latest and greatest in food entertainment internet social media viral marketing and video games this week we're going to talk about this month i suppose we're going to really focus and drill down on

video games get to the bottom of it you know folks these digital delights have come such a long way since the bleep bloop blorp of pac-man and his gang i saw i saw a picture of a hockey player's face and i was like something's off about it was a guys it was a damn digital image and from a video game i was i was starstruck have you seen this there's a new one in there have you seen this? There's a new one in there. Have you seen this? Dragon Lair, they call it. And you're a very brave knight trying to get to the bottom of it. But it looks like a cartoon. I thought I was playing. I only got through about 15 seconds before I died, but I was playing a cartoon.

It was amazing. You were watching a cartoon, you mean? You were watching the cartoon? No, I was playing it. I want to tell you about this game, Dragon's Lair. I finished it. Dragon Lair. I believe it's Dragon Lair.

No, no. This is mine. Dragon's Lair. It's a sequel. It's a sequel. There's more than one dragon this time, idiots. They share a lair. They fall in love.

And I cried. It was a video game that made me cry. Wait, they share a lair so fall in love and i i cried it was a video game that made me cry wait they share a lair so it's you're missing the point i cried at a video game um that's so powerful they're art now i guess they're about i guess they well i don't know let's not go wild here art's still the museum stuff so it may just be fart uh let's get right into it's may we're talking about may 2017 let's get into our uh honorable mentions first who's got

an honorable mention they want to talk about I've got one okay you guys may know I really really really like fire emblem it's like slowly become one of my favorite video game franchises of all time so whenever a new game comes a new fire emblem game comes out i get very excited and that used to happen once every i don't know decade and now it's happening once every three months um and so i've played through the newest of the fire emblems which is fire emblem echoes

shadows of valentia yeah that's right i think it Yeah, that's right. I think it's called, it's on 3DS. And it's not super great. I would go so far as to say it's maybe a little bad. It's a little bad. It's not super bad, but it's a little bad. It's just like you can't do this. You can't do a reboot of an older game like this in a franchise that has evolved in the way that this franchise has without incorporating some of the good stuff that has been.

It's basically like, OK, let's let's let's make a new fangled Mario game with new graphics and all the visuals that you love about Mario. But let's only give him the ability to jump straight up and whack a hammer uncontrollably and now it's called mario what now it's called mario mario it's it's they literally picked like all of the mechanics that have since been killed off in fire emblem because they weren't as fun as the new mechanics as an example the weapon triangle system which is like known as like a very tactical fun engaging way to play is not in this game at all um also you can't fuck at least you can't in the part i haven't gotten to the point and you can't even kiss as far and maybe you get unlock that ability you can earn a kiss but it takes a lot of doing uh and most i mean they did add support conversations

but it doesn't result in time babies so at that point i don't even know why we're bothering so what's the honor in this mention russ i'm failing to say i do want to mention actually for what it's worth so the localization of this game is actually quite good yeah um the writing uh generally i like skip through a lot of the dialogue and story stuff of Fire Emblem games because it's usually kind of garbo. And the overall story of this is not great. It's like kind of generic. But as it progresses on, I really did feel attached to the characters and the way they were written. And they kind of speak like human beings and not like I'm a soldier of four.

I mean, some of them do, but most of them actually do speak like human beings, which I really appreciated. And it's fully voiced. And a lot of the voice works actually quite good as well so i think it kind of bodes well for the next um the first switch firemobile game which comes out next year i'm not counting warriors because the fuck that but i think um yeah gets me very excited for the future of firemobile stuff so long as we just appreciate that this should never be returned to again, like Weapon Triangle or die. Perfect.

That's all. I don't really have any, because all the games I played are going to be discussed today. Justin and I played a bunch of Tap Titans. It was all right, but I'm kind of over it. Oh, no, I can't. It's more of the progressive tapping games. No, it's great.

I mean, it's really, it's the best one of those, I will say. It's the best one of those, but after a while, I was just like, okay. Yeah. I played a pretty good iPhone game called Card Thief. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. That is the sequel to, if you ever played an excellent game called Card Crawl, which is sort of, not solitaire, but sort of a dungeon crawler card game, I guess would be the best

way to describe it. This is a stealth, uh, card game. Uh, so in every stage there's a nine by three by three, nine card layout of an area that you're in. And the sort of flow is you're moving, you have one card that represents you and you're sort of moving from card to card and uh i guess the metaphor would be you're picking them up but really you're interacting with each card and each one has a stealth cost so you're you start off at a 10 and then um stronger enemies have a stealth cost uh to walk over them so it's you spend your stealth as you pick up each of the cards um but you can if if uh it plays with lighting so there are some cards that provide light to other cards that makes enemies harder to um to to pick up i guess or like it increases their cost and there's

also a cool directional mechanic where like if a light comes on the enemies will look at it and so if you can collect that card approaching it from the opposite side of where it's looking, you can do it for free. There's some really cool shit. It does a lot with like this really, really tiny play space. Yeah. And the eventual goal is at some point you have to get through X number of cards to find the card that you use to escape.

And you have to pick up a treasure in each stage. And the longer you hold off picking up that treasure, the more valuable it is, but also the more difficult it becomes to pick up. And there's cool stuff like there are barrels you can hide in where if you end your turn on one of those cards, it refills your stealth. You also have gear that you bring into each stage,

which can do different things like there's a noise arrow that can redirect enemies. There's a water arrow that can douse flames from a long way away. So it's really interesting. I will say that it's, I feel like a base level of confidence that I'm having a hard time sort of getting past. Yeah, I played a couple games and just couldn't get it. I think it's a really clever game. It's just like, I don't know. I felt like I just felt like I couldn't really crack how to do it right.

Yeah, there are some runs that are better and some runs that are worse. And a lot of times I'm not exactly sure why one was better than the other. So I don't know. It's really interesting. If that's your bag, it's worth checking out. Sne plant did you play anything i'm gonna talk about something i'm gonna keep it real quick because i know you're gonna be like don't talk about it perfect yeah oh no i know what it is near automatized the best game of the year jesus christ i'm just gonna i'm just gonna zip through it really quick so last time we spoke about it i was like still playing through my first playthrough but had like seen some spoilers from uh second and third new game plus

type of stuff it is not new game plus it's just like a new game set in the same environment each time you beat it in each version of the game becomes like a commentary or criticism of the version you just played right it is absolutely wild i i am completely smitten by it i it is like i i it is like the one game i want to think about constantly that i have not felt that way in a long time and it is the first game that is doing meta without like falling to the same meta story that every game has done until this point which is like so you've been shooting people well don't you feel bad yeah um this is like i mean it's literally well you shoot people and those are programmed things, but like maybe we're all programmed things. Maybe this doesn't matter, but maybe it does.

Let's try looking at this from the complete opposite angle. And now the game is just a shmup. The shmup shit is tight. The shmup shit is so tight. And like this weird thing where you start, i don't want to like spoil it because i really want people to play it i won't spoil it but i want to say like it plays so much with identity and who you think you're playing as and is constantly subverting who you are empathic for like it knows that you instantly feel empathy for whoever you're put in the shoes of sure and it plays with that in really really really interesting ways um and i i

know that like it starts out and it feels like the like very cliche almost button mashy like combat thing and it takes a long while to kind of figure out the terrain. Like we mentioned last time, but Holy cow, does this game reward? Like the more you play, it just gets better and better and better. I need to,

I need to stick with it. Cause I got, I think I got maybe a little over halfway through the game, my first play through the game. And I kind of just thought it was just sort of a, a big and empty character action game where i didn't feel like i was necessarily like mechanically invested in what was going on even though i liked the story it was like i felt no need to like get new stuff and

build new parts and buy new weapons because it all felt kind of samey to me but i should get back into it because that love that like meta storytelling like that's what i love about the zero escape games and this sounds like that kind of exactly yeah and and it rewards like just trying stupid things like essentially breaking a store by spending too much causes things that like completely shift the story or provide like massive amount of back and like backstory that you would not get otherwise that fills i i don't want to say it even like that because like it doesn't do that awful thing where like some video games especially some japanese video games hide like key elements of the story that make it unenjoyable if you don't get them it's more like it gives you the base level that first playthrough and then every step after that just because you

already have the basics allows for massive amounts of discovery and surprise because it doesn't need to worry about you essentially missing anything okay so let's never let's never let's agree right now who's going to talk about near automata next month no i can't i can't we're done we're done we're done we're done i'll play it but we're done the fishing's good too um so i just wanted to uh real briefly mention the surge because i played some of that today um it's kind of a i mean the very uh i guess pedantic that the word what reductive way of describing is a sci-fi dark souls but it's not because they obviously took like a crap ton from dark souls yeah right what do you mean i mean i've watched a lot of gameplay of it it's pretty damn close yeah i mean it's it's it's definitely similar um it's cool there's some interesting stuff going on. I like some of the ways it's evolved is if you see a lot of the enemies are like human or human-shaped enemies wearing exosuits.

And if you attack them, you can target certain areas. Once you have them targeted, you can use the right stick to target certain limbs. certain limbs. And if you do enough damage to those limbs before you kill the enemy, then you can cut the arm or leg or head equipment off and use it for your own, which is kind of neat. It's kind of neat mechanic. There's also cool stuff where if you go, the longer you go without returning to the med bay, which is sort of the bonfire for all intents and purposes um the longer you go without it you get a multiplayer a multiplier for your um the the gear you're earning which is

like your stuff you use to level up the scrap you're earning um so that's kind of neat because it's this cool risk reward of like i could run back and just deposit this stuff oh you can also bank it so if you don't want to risk losing a huge chunk of run back and just deposit this stuff oh you can also bank it so if you don't want to risk losing a huge chunk of stuff um and you don't have enough to use it towards leveling up you can bank it and it'll be there safe for you but again the longer you go without doing that then the more valuable uh killing enemies is so it's a it's a smart yeah yeah it's a smart risk reward thing um the the complaint I would have right now is the environments that I've seen so far. I'm in sort of the second big one.

And it's sort of a factory type thing. I'm assuming there's going to be a lot of this industrial setting because of the kind of game it is. And the industrial setting, there's no map. The industrial setting, there's no map, and you don't really have – with Dark Souls, I think the environments are so particular and so distinct. Yeah, a lot of landmarks. Yeah, a lot of landmarks. You always sort of know where you're at. But twice now, I have had an issue where I get deep in, and I have to try to get back to my scrap after I get killed. And I just can't because I don't,

it's hard to find your way around because it lacks those sort of landmarks. And that was kind of frustrating. It has this mechanic where you drop your scrap when you die and you have three minutes to get back to it before it disappears. But when you kill enemies, it extends the time you minutes to get back to it before it disappears. But when you kill enemies, it extends the time you have to get back.

That's cool. Yeah, it's cool. There's a lot of smart ideas, and I think I'm going to keep playing it. It's neat. I got really frustrated because of that. Just not being able to get back to my body because I can't navigate the environment is a bummer.

But again, i'm not super far so i don't know how how pervasive of an issue that is but it was certainly an issue when i was playing i think we should move on and start talking about our games and maybe keep the conversation a little bit tighter so we actually do have a halftime this episode yes i agree griffin who wants to start yeah uh we should start with the game that has the longest potential for conversation and i think that's pub play if i had to guess yeah um okay i'll do uh pub g so my game is player unknowns battlegrounds great title just a primo title so it is a a shooter on a third person well i guess you can switch what person it's in uh on pc it's a battle royale game um and you've probably have heard about it or seen

video of it or like play it because uh it's a very very hot game right now and it is exactly the type of game i don't dig on but fuck me do i love this game so so very much uh so it started out as a the designer in the game is a guy named brandon green whose online handle is player unknown hence the title um and so it started out as an arma 2 mod called daisy battle royale and then daisy i guess branched off to become its own standalone game and then there was a different sort of daisy mode called survivor games with a z that was like this type of thing but anyway this is its own standalone thing with another development studio um called player unknowns battlegrounds let's just call it um battlegrounds here's the here's the premise

every game uh matches last usually about a half hour or so uh you start out with 100 players and you're in a big airplane and you fly over this big island and the island is i believe five square miles um it is it's very big but i mean you play enough matches and you will become sort of familiar with the major landmarks on the island but it's the same island every game uh the airplane's trajectory across the island it just flies in a straight line is different every time. And so I think that's sort of one of the bigger factors that changes, like no two games are going to be the same.

Um, so when players jump out, like the game, the active area is going to be different every time. Um, so you jump out of the airplane, you skydive down, you can see other players parachuting and you have to run to buildings and um uh you know bunkers and any sort of landmark uh where there might be gear that you can use to equip yourself there's stuff like pistols and shotguns and assault rifles and sniper rifles and submachine guns and uh grenades and body armor and helmets and attachments for all your weapons and grenades and different medicines. There's a bunch of different stuff that you will, uh, be searching for.

And the better equipped you are, um, the sort of better chance you're going to have to be to survive. It's, I called it battle Royale as the genre. Um, and it's very much based on like that, that movie, the Japanese action horror movie battle Royale. And I guess to a lesser extent, hunger games where every game is going to be different. You don't know what kind of gear you're going to have.

You don't know where you're going to be landing. In addition, there is a circle of electricity that after you land after five minutes, that circle will then collapse to a smaller circle. And you have to stay in front of it because if you're outside the circle, you're constantly taking damage. and the tighter the circle gets the more damage it does to the point where like once you get down to like the final 10 and the circle's real small if you get outside of it for five seconds you're dead yeah i think i think the circle aspect is probably the reason

that it's become so popular um i think it does a lot of things right but that in particular um but basically by one of the issues that i think people have with games like Arma or even H1Z1 and DayZ from stuff like that by forcing people into increasingly smaller circles it basically forces people to make choices that are not the most tactically smart choices right but it encourages people to like fuck shit up and the circle the circle there's a lot of randomness to the game you might drop into a building and get a fucking tight um assault rifle with an four-time scope and um extended mag and a silencer which basically makes you invisible and you can like just hide up in a mountain and take pot shots at people and they'll never find out where you are um that could be in the first house you find and awesome you could also land in an entire like um like six

house complex where you don't find fucking anything and then you're screwed and similarly the circle collapses in sort of a random pattern like it doesn't always go in towards the center if you're in the very center of the circle you might be outside of the next circle because it hugs closer to one side of the or i guess one at uh end of the circle than another so there's a lot of randomness and which is kind of an equalizer. Like if you are, if there is a sniper who's like fucking elite gamer up in a mountain,

who's just like fucking shit up, but then they, the circle moves away from them. And then all of a sudden they have to make this desperate run down the face of the mountain. You might be able to see them. This is a game about like, it's about,

it's like maybe 30% luck. And then like 20% shooting skill, but it's like 50% not being seen and knowing where everyone else is. This is a game about like positioning and keeping your position hidden. And so you're constantly, constantly making these evaluations of like, oh shit, I see somebody. Do I want to shoot at them? If I shoot at them, the other, let let me see there's 30 people left alive if i kill them then the other what 28 people are going to know where i am and gonna find me like sometimes it makes sense to

be the last one standing after killing the second place finisher and winning that way like sometimes it doesn't make sense to write or maybe you do want to kill somebody they'll drop all their stuff do i want to run at where people just saw this puff of red blood explode and like are they gonna look at that are people looking at oh shit there's a car nearby do i want to go even near that car because people are probably looking at this car like you are constantly constantly constantly making these decisions and um it takes there's a the learning curve is treacherous like um i've played i would say it is it isn't like i i don't think you can win within the first five hours of playing whatever but i think you can feel like the first time i played i was able to get a few kills and feel like i accomplished something and that's a big difference from just like mastering the game

there's a lot of like granular stuff that takes a long time to master and even just like getting a gun and learning how to shoot somebody takes forever because you're not always going to find a gun and get to drop on somebody in a game like it takes practice to even learn how to shoot because that is not a circumstance that you're going to run into every game that's why i say the learning curve is is very steep but i've gotten to like second place twice now and every time i break into the top 10 it is i have not felt that um tension playing a video game maybe in my whole life um it is it feels like i would say the only other time i felt that level of tension was like i've been doing a fucking destiny raid for three hours and it's finally looking like the boss is gonna go down yeah yeah yeah like oryx oryx like popping

up for that final like oh dpsm dp if you don't dpsm now then all the work we put in this these past couple hours are going to be lost like it's it's a bit like that but it's that tension but oh you've only been playing a game for 10 like 15 minutes so like that level of tension so frequently is just it shows it's really great griff i i played a lot less than you and when i sort of bounced off of this, it was, you and I had sort of the same take. So I'm curious if you can sort of address this issue and tell me how like

your view on it sort of evolved. But the big complaint I had with pub G, I guess is the accepted nomenclature. Plunk bat also works. Okay. The, the big issue I had was that it seemed like there was a lot of, it was kind of neat in the beginning when you were running around,

like scooping up gear and seeing what you got. That was kind of like Christmas. But then there was like, after that, it was a huge lull of waiting and, and waiting for something that usually didn't happen. You know, somebody running up on you.

And then towards the end, just sort of getting killed the first time you encounter somebody. So it was like a lot of boredom and then a really quick death that really didn't give you the opportunity to get any better at the game. So like, what am I sort of missing?

I've enjoyed the game more when i stopped because you and i used to play together and like my strategy would be like oh i found a shotgun i'm just gonna hang out in this house until some dumb asshole comes to this house i shoot him with a shotgun and that was an inherently flawed strategy like the reason that we weren't enjoying the game is because we weren't really playing it right so like you hang out in that house and somebody walks in and you shoot him with a shotgun all right you gotta kill it doesn't really fucking matter though you're not really that much closer to winning there's there are ideal circumstances that you can find yourself in which is a good vantage point with a a good gun

with a lot of good attachments preferably like a high range uh rifle with a good scope and also a close range weapon in case somebody gets up on you in a position where you are pretty sure you know where everybody is you get good healing items you got good armor and every moment that you spend not pursuing that ideal winning circumstance is a moment that's going to bring you closer to a middle of the pack finish and that's just all that's just all there is to it so you have to play the game with a more aggressive... I started enjoying the game more when I played it more with Jake Lear, who has like 500 hours log and a bunch of wins. Jesus Christ. No, he's very fucking good.

And it was interesting to play with him because I was like, all right, I found a cool shotgun. I got a pretty good rifle. Don't have enough healing items. I have like a level two police vest. So I'm looking all right. Let's just hang out in this house. He's like, no, you need to find like a four times scope we don't know where anybody is like part of the game

is is getting the guns and that's the easiest thing to figure out but there are more arcane elements required to win or yeah you can get magic spells no like just knowing where what is an ideal like combat scenario like up on a mountain face behind a rock um fairly like camouflaged would be a pretty cool with like a high range scope and if you have a silencer that opens up more options because all of a sudden you have more like if you do see somebody down in the distance that maybe isn't gonna run at you fuck it shoot them you got a silencer nobody's to know where you are. Like, there's a lot of stuff that is gear-based that it changes how many options you have. So you've got to constantly be in pursuit of those options.

Because otherwise, you can just, like, hang out and have a pretty good setup. But you're still going to finish, like, 20th place and, like, you're not going to win anyway. but you're still gonna finish like 20th place and like that you're not gonna win anyway also it's more it's more fun to like get out there and try to fucking hunt people down than it is to wait in a building and then oops nobody came and the circle closed in and i was too slow to catch up and the circle killed me did any of you read sorry did any of you read austin's piece at uh waypoint about the scope in this game uh no no basically like the gist of it it was a really interesting piece was like it's the best power up in a long time in a video game as in like power up in like the classic sense where you like find something and suddenly you're just essentially a

god yeah um where if you get like the old the top level scope in this you can look across the entire map just pick people off and nobody has a damn yeah so the map the map is eight kilometers by eight kilometers and that's how it separates it out into like these little squares and there are videos online of people killing each other from one kilometer away with like a powerful enough scope but here's what's fucking great as circle gets tight enough you're not gonna need that scope and the person with the shotgun is probably gonna win like the game is fucking constantly changing and you have to stay on top of it but it is more enjoyable if you are aggressive and just saying like i have pretty good gear right now the only way i'm gonna win is if i have the best gear so i need to keep looking

around until i find it or i need to kill somebody who does um and that i was like that that playing that way has changed the game for me and it's why i started doing like much much much much better at the game still haven't gotten that that winner winner chicken dinner but i'm i'm gonna fucking keep trying though the only thing i i wanted to add to this is like obviously there's a ton of mechanics and gameplay stuff to talk about stuff like that i think more so than any pc game that i've played in recent memory it is like a great just hang out and shoot the shit with your friends kind of game we do a stream called awful squad on thursdays um and we're all pretty bad but it's still fucking super fun this time we

played where simone was our mom and we couldn't do anything unless she gave us the order to go ahead to take the kill shot it was fucking amazing it's like a fun you can do motorcycle stunts like that's the other thing like it is a tactical military simulator but also you can do motorcycle stunts and so there's like clips of people like going up a steep hill launching over a building screeching to a halt on the other side hopping off their bike and like shooting two people as they come out of the building and it's like oh that's so dumb and i fucking love it like i haven't watched really i haven't watched this much like people playing a video game i'm into since since destiny like this is filling that that gap for me in a major way um i definitely get

frustrated with it sometimes it's still frustrating to invest a bunch of time and have a good setup and think you're about to like at least place top 10 and then just like somebody with a sniper rifle who you will never ever in a million lives hope to ever see shoots you to death and then just like somebody with a sniper rifle who you will never ever in a million lives hope to ever see shoots you to death and it's like oh okay well that that's i guess i'm done playing now um but i've i've i've really been enjoying it as i sort of scaled over the learning curve uh can i add one thing really quick about watching it like i think this is in the running for one of my favorite games of the year before i ever played it and it's just because basically it solves the big problem i have with esports which is most esports you have to like really know how to play the game to enjoy

them and even then things happen so quickly and there's so much going on everything's slow enough and it's obvious enough because it's a shooter um that you can like see an entire game play out and you can see like multiple players doing things all at once without feeling like you're losing your bearings on any one player which makes it yeah really really watchable and you also always know that something awesome is going to happen within x like you see a meter and once the meter counts down you know whoever you're watching is going to have to sprint ahead or do something dumb to get out of the circle so that level of like i'm going to just keep watching until the whatever the next circle shrinks yeah keeps it makes it just like such a simple language to like follow as a sport which is like exciting i will say to that point i really wish and i get why this

isn't in there for like because this is a game about information and i do this would be a pretty easy way to exploit that i would give anything for like a post-death like so either kill cam or like that way to spectate a good fit for me and what do you like dc do you like dc superheroes or picky you know i just think you don't really care i just think superheroes are neat i don't really care between the two um and so i wanted to check it out i heard i heard some good stuff so um let me talk about i'm not somebody who likes to play online a lot and i'm i'll address that here in a second. But let's talk about the single player offerings because they are extensive and I think they're really cool.

So there's a story mode that is actually really well sort of fleshed out. It does a really good job of, it weaves a really interesting story of the overarching thing being Superman starts killing criminals and Batman locks him up in a jail that can hold Superman. And then when a threat makes its presence known that only Superman could help us stop.

There are groups that feel like that we should let Superman help. And then there are groups that are not so keen on that. And they're sort of all fighting, which is the, and everyone chooses a side. I will say though, without the clear delineations between like hero and villain it gets a little hard to follow like wait a minute were they are they batman's

team or superman's team or whatever is that the idea it's like a civil war thing where like two sides it's like batman or superman exactly yeah yeah basically exactly like that so there's there and and definitely i would say batman is portrayed as the the good guy, I would think. But there are. Insofar as he doesn't approve of killing people. Yeah, exactly. But they make rational arguments, I think, for both sides of it. And it's interesting.

It's a lot more fleshed out than you'd see in a fighting game, certainly. And it's better than a lot of the comic stories I've read, most assuredly. So on the story front, it's really neat. It also cycles you through a lot of different characters, but still letting you get a few matches in with each one, giving you time to check out. It's not all, but a good number of characters. So I enjoyed that. Is it pretty much just like bot matches for the story?

How do you mean? Like, it's like a Mortal Kombat story. I mean, obviously there's cut scenes and stuff, but outside of that, it just plays out like a- Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's just the gameplay segments are just comprised of fighting. There are some segments also that you can choose between two people to play.

Sure. So beyond the story, which is of a good length and really nicely done- Who wins? It's up to you. Ooh. The single players also have access to

something called the multiverse which is uh when you load up the multiverse there are a few different planets to choose from i guess they would each be different earths basically um and different realities where there are different conflicts going on. And that's all sort of fancy narrative wrapping around, um, you have to fight X number of bad people on this world. Um, and, and, but in each of the stages, there are certain, um, like criteria you can complete, like don't use any light attacks in here and, and don't, you know, uh, play it with this character for extra bonuses or whatever. To give you an example right now, there's a multiverse event called to end all wars

where you can unlock, um, all of Wonder Woman's, uh, outfit from the new movie. So you play through as Wonder Woman and, and fight a bunch of people and earn her gear. Um, the gear I should mention, isn't just this aesthetic. The gear actually has bonuses. So you can level up and get and equip better gear and gear has like level attributes. It has additional like stats. It adds to your strength or your defense and stuff like that. So the gear is actually really important. And I think as a single player, that is a really big deal. Um, because, you know, it's not just about like getting better so you can beat people online. You know, you're, you have a reason to keep playing because you're unlocking

better gear and, um, all the gear pieces look different. You know, it's not drastically different. You know, you can, some of them are, some of them are pretty drastic, but you know, by and large, you can still tell that's that Superman. Um, but there are also shaders that you can use to color them sort of however you want. Um, and it's, that's really, that's really cool. It's a really good incentive for single player to keep, um, pushing on. I will say this though. And I'll also also let me say that there's a really good tutorial and uh a really good um sort of uh practice mode where you can just sort of like try out different moves and stuff like that i will say this though and it's sort of realization i had while playing i was really enjoying it and i was like there were a couple of characters where I had learned, I would say a lot of their moves and some of their combos and had a, like was, it was not tough for me to beat pretty much

any AI opponent. Um, but then I started playing online and, um, I lost every single time and it's, it's weird. And this is not an injustice issue. I think that the reason I'm highlighting it here is that it has recognizable characters. It has really cool looking moves. The attacks are not that hard. There are no special attacks that are super hard to pull off. I can do most of them pretty consistently.

But there is a gap. There is this knowledge gap with fighting games where no matter how many times and i've been down this road quite a few times like there's this knowledge gap with fighting games that that people who have never touched the game are come in equipped with and no matter what i do i can't seem to get past that knowledge yeah the nether realm games especially like more the mortal combat the more recent mortal combat games and injustice one like there is a there's like an infinite combo it feels like for not an infinite combo i know that's like a dirty word or whatever in fighting games but like there it's it's all about stringing together these combos where you don't allow your opponent to do anything which like there's gaps in every fighting

game right this is a genre specifically about mastery but it feels like if you're on the wrong side of it of on these games it's like i just want to be able to punch once uh i just didn't i i have a question about the tutorial because i'm curious if you had the same experience that i did which is that i was before the game started i was like man it'd be great to have a tutorial in this game where I felt like I was confident before I started. And lo and behold, I boot the game, and there it is. And it is great. For, well, I can't say a percentage because I never finished it.

Because I got to a point where it was like, cool, and you've learned that special move. And now learn how to do a move cancel into a throw combo yeah and i swear i did it for 20 minutes and i could not pull it off it gets weirdly granular in the tutorial and it's like whoa and that's that is an issue they definitely like i wish there was a way to i don't know do, do that gradually, I guess. Because I had the exact same experience where I was like, what? You want me to do what? Did you actually complete it?

Or were you just like, I'm never going to use this? I'm not that. I did finish it. Wow. So that was great. But not helpful to me. Because it was like, I did it once and I was like, well, I'll never need to know how to do that again.

And the problem is the game can teach you the move, but the thing that game can't teach you is, or like, and I know that this is solvable if you have the time to invest in it. Like if I wanted to buckle down and only play Injustice 2, I don't live a life where I can do that, but like because I have to play a lot of different games, I can't get to that point, but like I don't know when is a good time to apply any of those skills, right?

Like just because I know the buttons I need to press doesn't mean I know like when is the time to do that, and if you look for help online, it's mainly like here's how you do the moves here's how you can tie combos together but like i'm still in the dark on like what is the way to apply these things that i know yeah i think i think the issue the biggest issue with these games and it's uh you don't see it as much or really very much at all in games

like hearthstone where you have like a very broad player base of people playing online because like effectively that's all you can do is play online but for games like this um the the percentage of people that are playing online are mostly people that are very intensely interested in fighting games and love sort of damage so you like the field of people that you're playing against are these obsessive people. And there's just like no middle ground. It's a 1v1 situation. It's not like you can in PUBG, you can hide in a corner and get the edge on someone that has like super good gear.

Here, you're just there's nothing you can do. It's purely a like, like Justin said, a like muscle memory thing. a like like justin said a like muscle memory thing i mean the moment i realized that i didn't understand fighting games at all slash i would never really enjoy them was when when i was doing that triforce story and like these guys had their own apartment in new york where they lived and practiced uh fighting games all day and i was doing an interview and like interviewing a few of them and one dude was on a floor mat practicing like a combo set for three hours and towards the end he was able to like perform it with pseudo regularity um and like watching that and you know this dude wasn't some like like, champion of the field yet.

Maybe he is now. When I saw that, it was like, oh, man. There is, to really, really nail these games, you actually do go into that tutorial mode, and you just practice over and over and over. Which, that's, oh, yeah, sorry, go ahead. If that's your thing, that's cool. It's just, like, I wish i was good at fighting games i remember buying a fight stick because i wanted to get really good at marvel versus capcom um and even that i think was a little bit too much for me to handle um maybe i'll take a spin at the new one that's coming out but but it that is not

necessarily complete with injustice too it is a neat, and if you're into fighting games, I've heard a lot of glowing stuff about it from people who are more into that. I want to do halftime because I want to make sure we have time to get to everything. Real quick, I just want to talk 10 minutes about what you guys are anticipating from E3 this year. Anticipating or

excited to see, hoping to see? I can do mine real quick. Seaman 2, baby. I can't believe it. Seaman well let me sit correct that no you're exactly right uh russ it would be c-man 3 there was a c-man 2 in japan uh never really stateside so c-man here he comes a bold a bold version i i like you know this is happening right griffin you know this is like yeah right, Griffin? You know this is like... Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm very excited. Yeah. What is it coming out on? Is it a platform?

It's only been my man Ute just tweeting about it. Okay. Was this the last thing that Leonard Nimoy did before he died? Oh. Like on his deathbed he recorded Seaman? Now, he did tweet a... Leonard Nimoy did? No, you did.

No. You'd say so. The creator of Seaman tweeted a uh a like a picture of a disc with like all of leonard nimoy's um fuck yeah vocal cuts from it so like maybe maybe there's enough on there i don't know here's here's where i'm at with this i'm not gonna get excited about c-man 3 until i see a new trailer for shinmu 3 that's where i'm at in like pipe dream town um i'm like i like so we've been prepping for e3 for the past few weeks and like getting appointments and like um getting listed stuff together to see and i feel like this happens every year and i could

probably go back to like the last besties where we talked about e3 or that may have been a while ago we're like i don't see that much that has me like psyched out of my mind but i'm i am just hoping that there is stuff announced during the press conferences and whatnot that does get me psyched if i'm being honest like the thing i want the most is switch games because that's like yeah i'm very very excited about the switch as a as a platform and i play it all the time i play it more than the amount of like new games on it would justify i've been playing minecraft on it i guess that's one i could have mentioned in the in the honorable mentions just because it's a really good portable version of minecraft but

i've played minecraft a lot in other places before and so i shouldn't be playing it and i get that i just want to be playing stuff on my Switch. So like, I'm excited to play the Super Mario Odyssey. And I just hope there's more Switch stuff that would get me pretty jazzed. Also, the Crew 2, I can't believe they're actually making. And maybe this one's going to be really good. Yeah, just to bounce off of what Griffin was saying,

my demands for Switch stuff is like so low to get me jazzed. i maybe this one's gonna be really good um yeah just to bounce off of what griffin was saying my demands for switch stuff is like so low to get me jazzed like all i want is fucking ports of gamecube and wii u games like bring that shit super mario maker on switch would end in my life smash like the wii u smash brothers that i never really put i played a tiny bit of just because it was so inconvenient to play on wii u um there's just like so many fucking games that would work so well and be so great for multi-player experiences that like that's all i want like those firemomb games that were on gamecube that never came to other platforms like bring all that shit to switch and make me very happy yeah that's all i want

also that animal crossing mobile game it's really on nintendo stuff i don't know why i am i don't know i don't know how it got this way but i feel like year in year out like and maybe it's just because they're the only ones who usually keep their shit on lock more than everyone else it's it's a big x factor i know i feel like i know more what microsoft is bringing and i know more what sony is bringing and like sorry y'all but a new uncharted game i'm like okay and a new fucking i mean god of war like i'm excited about those games looks pretty cool days days gone doesn't really do much for me like i i'm just not okay. I'm very revelatory. You're getting Detroit. I cannot wait to see how, without that PS4 power, we cannot tell the story of robots in Detroit.

I can't wait for that. I'm genuinely excited. Does anybody know what to expect from the Microsoft press? Oh, boy. Does anybody know what to expect from the Microsoft press? Is anybody like... I'm looking at a list to help supplement this conversation and I don't see anything. Crackdown?

Crackdown has to be there and then that Rare game has got to be there. Yeah, sure. That kind of looks cute. That's got to be there. Yeah. Yeah, sure. Oh, yeah. That kind of looks cute. Yeah. I mean, they've got to pull out, basically, so they're going to be showing the Scorpio, obviously. That's the big focus for them.

And I feel like they need to pull out some sort of crazy exclusivity deal with the Scorpio. I don't know what it's going to take. Who is the audience for that? I don't get it. Also, they're going to show off their, like, they have to show off their mixed reality headset right yeah mixed reality slash what do you think that's ready for a consumer well they already have it you can buy it it's just not microsoft branded right now because they built like a platform and then you can buy different versions i think sony's gonna have god of war and um yeah the zombie game game that Griffin mentioned. What's that game called?

Days Gone. I can't believe you couldn't remember the name of it. Days Gone. I think they're going to have a good lineup, but Sony's actually been really, really good every year. Yeah, sure. For the past three or four years. But again, no, Griffin, you're right. I think Nintendo just launched this console.

We all know that consoles begin to mature in their second year, so this is finally us seeing what is the future of this console. We all know that consoles begin to mature in their second year. So this is finally us seeing what is the future of this console. And so I'm just fucking hyped. I also really want to play Destiny 2. If Microsoft rolls out, and I think they're going to have to, the Scorpio and a lot of the specifics there, and make that hardware the big push,

does Sony have anything to answer that do you think sony will be able to make any sort of hardware any game like any any new like i'm not i have i cannot the the only reason i turn on my xbox is because it was the platform that for whatever reason i bought the jackbox party packs on that's it and and if it wasn't for that i swear to god i would not have touched that thing since fucking fantasia yeah i i mean i i i really don't know if anybody cares about 4k and like i think i think what i worry will happen in terms of just people being very angry on the internet is microsoft is going to go out there and be like yo this is the most powerful machine it upgrades not just new games but all games to 4k and people are gonna be like cool what else does it do 4k blu-rays and it's like no does it make the games better and i'm like no there is no i think we're doing a little bit of conflating here, though, between what gamers, we the gamers, think about this kind of thing and how analysts or people who maybe are not analysts because this is their job to pay attention, but people who are paying less attention.

Like if you're reading the headlines on CNN, you know, is Sony going to have anything to answer back to Microsoft announces, you know, most powerful console ever. It's just, there's, they're, they're getting so thoroughly dunked on in the first person games department. Like I, if any analyst is like Sony failed this year, cause they didn't have another beat,

then those analysts should be like run out of town on a rail because that's not how it fucking works. Like there's, I can't believe how few forza horizon 3 i was being unfair i have played that that's the most recent one and that was last i don't even know when it's just it's i i i don't i don't understand i i don't understand why that is the priority putting out new more powerful hardware for all that will play all the games that you haven't been prioritizing i think the weird thing for me with all of this with scorpio is so the whole idea right is to turn xbox it seems like into the app

store like as a brand xbox is no longer any given piece of hardware it's an app store and you go and buy games on it and it works on your like console style computer or your computer style computer which is like a really great idea really fantastic the weird thing though that becomes a problem for that is they're gonna go on stage and they're gonna say they what they'll want to say is project scorpio is the best place to play new xbox games but that's gonna be wrong a new ultra-powered pc is gonna be the best place to play those games like you can people that care enough about specs already have that piece yeah that's what i'm saying is like if they're playing the spec nerds with it but spec nerds that that option already exists thanks to this big idea they have so it feels really weird like i just don't know i really can't tell who it's for

if the play for xbox is hey if you want a better version played on pc or also you could spend a good deal of money and played on this like stop gap that is between a normal xbox and a pc i mean i would love for them to have some big surprise that is a twist for this but if like the selling point is it's like an xbox but more expensive and a bit better but not as good as a high-end pc that's a weird space to live in yeah it's weird um weird situation great we need to get into our next games rush fresh deck are you ready i'm ready let's hear it juice okay the next the game that i'm gonna do is called dead cells uh and that that's spelled cells like the you know nucleus in your body oh yeah um justin alerted me this game it is a game i hadn't heard of until

justin was playing it uh i guess you found it on early access how did you sort of stumble upon this game uh phil sent me a trailer it was when he wanted to get reviewed and he asked if that was playing it uh i guess you found it on early access how did you sort of stumble upon this game uh phil sent me a trailer it was when he wanted to get reviewed and he asked if that looked interesting so i there you go um yeah so i i picked it up and instantly fell in love with it like instantly did not take any time at all for me to know that this is a game i was going to dig um very brass uh broad strokes um brass tax description it. It's a 2D side-scrolling roguelike with Dark Souls elements, with rogue legacy elements. And you're basically like a dude,

like an undead dude who explores randomly generated dungeons. Again, this is 2d side scrolling um and as you explore you find items that are either weapons or sub weapons and stuff like that and you're getting increasingly more and more powerful um and once you get to the end of a stage um you can choose to spend the cells that you've collected. That's like the resource in the game to unlock different, uh, items and item upgrades that will then populate the world. Um,

if you played a game like, um, binding vice, they could kind of work similar to that in the sense of like, once you unlock something, you don't automatically just like have it in your inventory at all times. It's more like it will now populate. It appears in the world.

Yeah. Yeah. Um, you also have to find, inventory at all times it's more like it will now populate it appears in the world yeah yeah you also have to find the blueprints and get them to the for those items in order to unlock them with the the cells that you collect right yeah there are certain and so there are blueprints there's like the a very micro and macro tension the macro being that if you die your runs over but in the micro like oh shit this blueprint looks hot i gotta get to the exit of this part of the level so that i can like start spinning my cells towards this thing because it looks awesome yeah so then you might spec your character just to survive that level but not really be effective for the rest of the game so there's kind of like a balance there um the thing

that i really like about it is as i've said we've seen a few of these sidescrolling dark souls games another one that was really good was salt and sanctuary which i really liked and and rogue legacy which i mentioned but in both those situations um neither of them had like what i would call like super ideal control schemes i would i would say salt and sanctuary was a lot closer um but in both cases they kind of felt a little hinky i think sultan sanctuary was trying to match the slow thoughtfulness of dark souls and rogue legacy was more like a super arcadey like you feel like very floaty and running around and and uh dead dead cells feels like the perfect middle ground between those two where you feel

like you have like complete control over the movement and your attacks and your character um but it like still has those um like permadeath mechanics baked in so you still have that tension of moving around but you're not really fighting against the controls to like survive a battle or something like that they're also really great it's really smart how in every run you find different primary weapons and those have really different bonuses that have to change the way you play. So like there's a rapier that crits if you do a roll right before you attack. So that makes, that's really fun because you're're just rolling around and murdering everything in your way. There's a whip that crits

if you hit the enemy with the end of it. If you hit it with the middle of the whip, it doesn't do much. But if you hit with the very tip of the whip, it does a critical attack and really brutalizes the enemy. There's one that does a critical right after you get hit.

There's one that causes bleeding to the enemy. There's one that's really fun that criticals with every attack if you're below 50% hit points. So it's like, well, this is going to be a pretty scary run, but if I know what I'm doing, I can cut through really quickly. There's actually a basis to that if there are doors in a lot of the stages that can only be opened if you get to them within a certain time so there is also a risk reward with like how long can i take and still open the doors

there's there's also some really cool um mechanics with uh sub weapons generally like i don't use sub weapons a lot games like castlevania and stuff like that where there's an inventory system and you're just like saving all of your items for the eventual time when you want to unload them all but you never end up using it here it's all on a cool down kind of similar to diablo where you know every three seconds you can use your special abilities so like i'm like throwing a turret and a bomb down whenever i like run into an encounter and that kind of like softens people up but i'm not feeling like i'm using precious resources which i really like yeah the synergy between those are really cool too like there's weapons that work uh that do like crit damage against enemies who are bleeding so if

you find like a grenade or whatever that has an effect where it leaves enemies bleeding for like six seconds you know you can throw a fucking grenade in a room get and then for six seconds if you just charge the fuck in there you can have just a little bonanza as long as you're like quick about it um i i have only a couple problems with the game i really fucking enjoyed playing it i think it's a really fun game just to play like the feel of it is really cool especially if you are lucky enough to get a load out where you can play with those really fun synergies um i really like ones that are like throw a fire bomb to set them on fire and then throw down a turret that does double damage against enemies

who are on fire like that i that's really really fun my two problems are like i think the upgrade system's a little bit bogus in that like um just like the cost the the economy of the game is kind of weird where you spend like uh 20 20 cells to unlock a new weapon and then you can spend 30 cells on it to increase its damage by five percent and it's like that's not very that's not very much and then that that escalates so quickly to the point where like you are spending as much to unlock like 15 items as it does to upgrade your weapon damage by like 10 like it is it's weirdly like unsatisfying um yeah i think they want to encourage people to use variety rather than like spend all their sure but i had a point where i felt like i'd unlocked all the worthwhile upgrades

because it just wasn't worth it to spend a bunch of cells to very very minimally increase the damage output of a weapon that i may or may not find on any given run it's kind of a weird way to approach it my other problem is that i got to the final boss of the game and it stinks real bad um it's not a very good final boss at all and um it was like i was a god with my loadout like i had this turret that cleaned shit up and i had these little biters they're called that are just like these little worms that will just like devour anybody and i had like all of my gear was synergized like i was doing insane damage to everything but this boss was just like it mostly floats up in the air and so all of my ground-based stuff was completely fucking worthless so i cleaned up until i got to this final boss and

just because the boss was not a ground-based boss i got destroyed and it took me i mean it's a roguelike so you lose everything and that took me like an hour and i was like yeah i think i'm done maybe playing dead cells a little bit it isn't it isn't early access and i'm hoping that like i don't know how they fix that without like just changing what the boss is or whatever but um i was i also think some of that is like like like i felt that way the first time i got to the final boss of spelunky and then like it took me 45 minutes to get there and like and i'm just talking about olmec i'm not even talking about hell and i died with like an amazing load out yeah but you know like a month later i was getting to olmec in four minutes and you know

so i think it might be that yeah i just felt like i had gotten much better at the game and i did have like the perfect loadout and i had taken my time and gone through all the levels to get all the money and bought all the upgrades i wanted and had all the skill upgrades and i was like this is it this is when i get to the boss and i got to the boss and there was no way that with the ground-based like locked to the ground weapons i had that i could have ever defeated that really can wreck shop leading up to the boss are not necessarily useful when fighting the boss which is kind of a yeah it's just a weird design decision because it's like the other stuff is you pick and choose your strategies based on

the loadout you have and then when you get to this boss fight the final boss fight of the game it's like okay there's only a few strategies that are going to work and let me see ah you don't have the right stuff all right well you're dead ftl had that same issue i feel like downwell kind of had that problem like um yeah so it's it's it's it's annoying um there's there's another boss fight in the game that you have to do that's not as um it's not as like punishing in that sense it's actually a little bit easy which is kind of i i know that it is easy because it's not uh difficult in the way that the final boss is and so it's it's hard a little bit easy which is kind of i i know that it is easy because it's not uh difficult in the way that the final boss is and so it's it's hard to balance that but um

yeah it's it's cool but also worth mentioning still in early access so yeah every chance that some of these issues could be addressed please come to switch oh god it'd be perfect it'd be so amazing we gotta get to pray holy shit yeah okay plant pray go for it so it's a good game um it is from uh arcane austin best known for being i guess half the studio responsible for uh dishonored i think they're the home of half this podcast what oh yeah and also i mean not the studio just the city no but that didn't really make sense and also known for writing a sick burn of Ben Kutcher and Jason Schreier on my coffee shop's

chalkboard what yeah when that whole like kerfuffle about frustum tolling I don't know I think it's frustum tolling yeah they changed somebody somebody changed that to the word I don't know. I think it's frustrant telling. Yeah. Somebody changed that to the word of the day on the coffee shop's chalkboard.

Yeah. Dig. Anyway, so basically, here's what it really is. It is the new System Shock. Thief 2 was... Not Thief 2. Oh, my gosh. Sorry. they uh thief 2 was not thief 2 oh my gosh sorry um prey 2 was going to be a sequel to this game that was in development hell forever and was it had portals before portal but you didn't shoot

a portal gun it was very weird and like pseudo offensive uh made by some of the people responsible for duke nukem 3d i believe It was affiliated with 3D Realms. And then P2 was going to be like, wow, it's this semi-open world game in space, and you're basically Han Solo. And then that game got canceled for a whole bunch of, like, wacky reasons. And then the studio or publisher, Bethesda, or ZeniMax, was like, this is so complicated. I'm really sorry.

But they were like, hey, we have this name. We have to use it on something. Those people who made Dishonored, they would like to make a new thing that is just System Shock. What if we let them make that and then just called it Prey? And they did. So you, to catch everybody up, you know what? I'm just going to let somebody else describe the basics of this. I'm like stumbling for some reason.

I can do it. I'll go quick. The basics of it is you are basically on a space station. It's like an open world space station in the sense of like a Metroidvania, but it's control-wise very similar to Bioshock or System Shock, if you played that. The mechanics involve a lot of like a metroidvania but it's uh control wise very similar to bioshock or system shock if you played that um the mechanics involve a lot of like hacking turrets and using the environment and like kind of coming up with your ways around certain encounters that's otherwise seem impossible

to beat it's like a very classic if you've you know if you're familiar with looking glass which is like the the old studio that made system shock as well as thief and a bunch of other amazing games deus ex um it's that spirit of game design in this game um and um it made my tummy hurt because i got nauseous yeah there are a handful of things that are like special about it the enemies are largely not humanoid. They're like black goop things. Some of them can be like larger beasts. The ones that you encounter most often are kind of like headcrabs from Half-Life, except they can like grow really long limbs and they're really hard to keep track of. Scary. You have a weapon.

You didn't even talk about what they do they fucking transform into objects to them yeah they you you don't know if that like coffee mug or trash can or um a more disturbingly health med like med kit in front of you is actually an enemy that's going to jump up and scare the shit out of you and hurt you so for a chunk of the game until you you can get a power that kind of lessens that you just go around like whacking the shit out of tons of stuff yeah if you ever see like two objects next to each other like yeah that's that's the that's how you start out is you see two phones on a desk and you're like don't nobody needs two fucking phones um you get a gun to kind of uh stop these things called the glue gun which

doesn't kill things it just freezes them in place but you can also use it to create uh platforms which essentially can let you break the game um speedrunners are having a hell of a time with it uh and that's that's what i really like about the game is i feel like these games were built back in the day and and i think prey returns to this with this idea of hey we could iron out all the ways for you to break this game and to take advantage of those systems but it would lose a lot of the fun and we would have to like cut some of the options out or we could just let people totally go nuts and if they think about it or they want to try something really bizarre they can bust the game entirely and shuttle through it as fast as possible or do all sorts

of weird stuff kind of bending the rules of the game um and that can be using this glue gun to get to places that you don't think you can or a thing that i did right away was i i couldn't get through a crack and there are these really heavy objects and you can upgrade yourself to move the heavy objects but instead i wanted to get through the store that was kind of blocked by a big i don't know like filing cabinet or something so i pushed my body in between this wedge and then i fired the glue gun at the door as much as i could and then it shot me through the door um which but what's cool like in that scenario like i can think of three other ways you could have done that yeah there's a power that lets you like turn into objects like the aliens do and you

could like turn yourself into a mug and then roll through a crack like that shit is you can also if so there's three weights for something there's like weight level one weight level two weight level three and you purchase upgrades and you can move bigger things but an object of a smaller weight will move an object of the next up weight if you apply force to it so if you bought upgrade one you could push like a weight one box into a weight two box into a weight three filing cabinet and use like the game's weird physics to like push and knock shit over it's really it's a game all about like unintended um like means of exploration and like surprise ways of dealing with situations and that's like arcane's whole shit and it does that stuff really really really well i yeah i uh i really i finished this game i really did not enjoy this game very much at all um oh yeah there's a few reasons for

that uh for me um i could definitely i obviously like can see the appeal but um a few of the issues I obviously can see the appeal, but a few of the issues, one, and this is just sort of the nature of the game, I really didn't enjoy fighting any of the enemies, especially those little things, the little mimics. I just despised sort of like once they were on your business, trying to find them and hit them with a mantra shield. They grab your genitals uh, trying to find them and hit them with a grab. They grab your, they grab your genitals. I really, I,

you had to do that a lot. I really just didn't enjoy it. Um, and I thought that was very unenjoyable. Um, I, I also am not, I don't feel like any of the weapons felt particularly good,

um, from a shooter perspective. And I know that that's something that people use sometimes to continue tension, build tension, um, which I, which I get. Um, but the other issue is I played on ps4 soon after it came out and it's a mess I mean it was a mess there was the drift on the the input drift was like

okay that's just for starters like there was drift on the input that made me think like something was wrong with my controller it was so laggy just like controlling it there's an audio issue where people talking were basically mixed so far down that you couldn't hear anything that they were saying um and the other uh sounds and music completely blew it out the load times um especially later in the game you start moving around the station a lot. And when you go through a door, we are talking like 45 seconds to over a minute long. Yeah. They were getting from A to B that are miserable and just like completely momentum killing and exploration killing.

And it's not like Skyrim where you could like turn a turkey leg for that 30 seconds. The end of the game, it involves like, um, it's open world so for the most part and as long as you have the gear you need to get to where you need to go you can go there but the end of the game if you especially if you want to play cleanup on some of your sub quests the game and like sort of the last critical path that you go down to finish the game is a lot

of backtracking and i had a point where i was unkillable basically and i was extremely super fast i had unlocked all the run speed upgrades so i was actually spending more time in the loading screens than i was playing because and that's not no that's not an exaggeration like i would spawn in run at like light speed to the like way point that i needed to go and like i would weigh my like that i needed to go and like i would weigh my like okay well this subquest is four load screens away and so getting there and coming back here is like we're talking about i actually started to like add it up like that's like almost 10 minutes loading and like fuck is that worth it um this is uh there was also a glitch there was a there's a very not particularly like complicated glitch that people use to uh double their resources infinitely um and basically that would in a way that completely

would break the game i think that has since been patched out um and also don't do that people it ruins your purpose and then there was just little things that like there was one stage where i had to put i remember this specifically there was one stage where I had to pick up three turrets and get them to a certain location there was a lift that I could use to put those turrets up every time I put all three turrets on the lift and then ran back up and push the button to make the lift go up the turrets somehow fell through the bottom of the lift and just stayed there at the bottom so I was back down and go back and pick them up I eventually had to do them one at a time so I get'd get one turret, run up, push the button, pick up the turret, move it onto the bridge, go back down.

And then I'd get to the door they're supposed to carry the fucking turrets through. And there's a guy that's bugged standing in the doorframe. So I had to pick up each one of these turrets and throw them over this idiot's head and damage the turrets. And then I couldn't get past this idiot's head and damaged the shirts and then I couldn't get past this idiot so I had to find a banana in the room and transform into a banana and slip through his leg I love that that's so good

it was a radical end to that story but a very bad beginning I do want to mention it's like a lot of those things have been fixed but for me it just really it killed the momentum of the game and it killed a lot of the fun have been fixed but for me it just really it killed the momentum of the game and it killed a lot of the fun and i found myself with just a much more distant appreciation of it i think than than anything else very quickly i do want to mention

i put it on pc um and none of the loading issues exist on pc obviously because it's whatever it loads in like a split second um but the default uh anti-aliasing settings they put in the game are basically motion blur so if for whatever reason you i don't generally get motion sick in games a few games have done it to me mirror's edge being like the biggest one in recent memory um this game did it to me big time um so definitely deactivate all the analyzing settings uh in there because um especially for all the zero g shits which i hated those levels in zero g are just not fun for me and it made it even more brutal uh with the puking on the keyboard i really liked the story and atmosphere and the music and shit in the game i i really i don't think the story stuck it for me like i don't

see i liked it i liked the ending ending stuff. I thought it was okay. It was building to something that I didn't think it really paid off on, but I thought it was fine. What did you like about the story, Griffin? I don't know. I dug the general atmosphere of the facility, and I think it handled the idea of the moral choice that it presented, I thought was kind of fascinating and

that it wasn't at it wasn't so black and white um and then once you get to sort of the after credits thing you sort of do see the the ramifications of the choices that you made in a way that i thought was really satisfying i thought i don't know i thought it was just really smart and i also like um i wish they had done a little bit more with like the groundhog day stuff that they teased so hard in the those the, those first trailers. Cause it's sort of only an element that gets you into the game and then it doesn't really happen again. But, um, yeah, I, I, I dug all that again.

I also do want to say the sound design in the game was fucking great. Like I know Justin, you didn't like the mimics, but like the sound that they made and the sounds that include you in like, you better be careful. Something in this room is fake. Like I hear like teeth clicking. I know. Creepy. that include you in like you better be careful something in this room's fake like oh god i hear like teeth clicking i know creepy i i this is like a classic dumb annoying thing to say about a video game but i am so excited for the sequel to this which i hope either actually no i don't think it's ever gonna ever happens i hope it does because i feel like the games that they take on

and this is the same with dishonored are so complex that just figuring out how to make the top level game work is very tough and if you look at the difference between dishonored one and dishonored two with the wild things they were able to pull off with their grasp of that design the stuff that i think they could do with the basics that they already have in place for prey are super duper exciting and i think they've they've done that hard work so i hope that they actually get the chance to do a sequel also yeah i think that could be imported to another ip though like i don't think it necessarily could that be though if they just keep making a bummer but i mean what you know the ip is

meaningless so like right i also real quick because i was talking about the story and you asked what i liked about it i think it did the best job of um like audio tapes what's like the what's the industry recording yeah like the recordings that you find of all of the crew who are with very very few exceptions all dead before the game even starts like the game does some really really really good character development stuff through those tapes and i usually don't fuck with that like i those those have been exasperating for me i feel like since like bioshock infinite where i would see one and i'd be like who fucking cares what this part like okay there's so many of these and like i'm not invested with these people who i'm not going

to meet so so okay. But in this game, it was, and they did some good character work, and then I think I said on Twitter, it's great because you get to love these characters and learn all of their eccentricities by listening to these tapes, and then an hour later, you will find them dead on a toilet somewhere.

Which was a little ham-fisted and a bit self-defeating, but bittersweet in a way that I thought was neat. So which of these games is the best game of the month? Okay, so I'll vote now. I think PUBG is my favorite of the month. I don't actually know if it came out this month. I think it went into early access in March,

but I like... We're going to count it. Yeah, don't care um yeah this was the month where i feel like it really kind of popped off and i think that game sets a new like in the way that call of duty 4 sort of reinvented how multiplayer shooters are played i think people like ea are going to be copying the mechanics of this game for the next five to 10 years. No, well, I would have said that tells, but it sounds like I was. I love that. So I think it's a really great week. Like I really apart from Injustice, which I didn't play like all three games I liked.

I think PUBG is like has the potential to be game of the year for me. Excellent. Well, congratulations, PUBG. And let me say that next month is gonna be rough is gonna be rough in june guys i don't really know how this show is gonna be in june because it's gonna be june is rough well we've got arms okay that's one uh ever oasis rpg maker fes for 3ds couple good 3ds games yeah there's gotta be oh the heck crash bandicoot oh he's back god yeah it's good it's gonna be dry it's gonna be rough manage it's gonna be rough we're gonna figure something out um but uh until that time

comes maybe we'll find something good on mobile you know there's a really good game coming out what's that the new uh valkyria chronicle sequel is coming out okay yeah i'm i'm like kind of excited about that yeah is it still like world war one era stuff i think it i think it's different is it fantasy bullshit i don't know look i think it might be fancy i think it might different. Is it fantasy bullshit? I don't know. Look. I think it might be fantasy bullshit. I think it might be good. I hope. Crystals and shit. Are you talking about Valkyrie Drive? Mermaid?

No, Valkyria Revolution. Yeah. Valkyria Revolution. Okay. That's not on the Giant Bomb page, so I don't know what to tell you. But maybe there's a lot to talk about. I don't know. I'm looking at the exact same list on a little website called Polygon.com.

I'm not familiar. Which one's that? Not familiar with it. We do those? Man, I got to check that out. Anyway, that's going to do it for us this week, folks. Be sure to join us again next month for the besties, because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best game?

Besties. Oh, wait. Did we talk about whether this game is better than Zelda or not? Oh, no, we didn't. Okay, we're back. It's not. Zelda's better. Besties. Until next time.

Besties.