The Besties - The Besties Podcast 33

Episode Date: November 2, 2012

So it turns out that we don't actually know how to count to 33 in roman numerals, so we're going with tried-and-true 'Merican numbers from now on. Other changes include a new theme song by the talented Ian Dorsch and we're no longer bleeping out cuss words, so tread carefully! With that out of the way, after an unfortunate delay, The Besties are back. Half of them were slammed by Hurricane Sandy while the other half basked with mai tais and sangria. Weather or no, many games were played this week and a new game of the week was crowned. 06:00 - Assassin's Creed 3 15:00 - Hotline Miami 20:45 - Halftime: Hurricane Sandy and Dracula 28:40 - Need for Speed: Most Wanted 38:30 - Punch Quest 47:20 - THE DECISION Get the show: Download MP3" Subscribe to the podcast (RSS) Subscribe on iTunes Get the full list of games (and other stuff) discussed at www.besties.fan. Want more episodes? Join us at patreon.com/thebesties for three bonus episodes each month!

so there was all that fucking keely backlash because yeah the dude was in a picture with doritos and halo 4 and mountain dew and now it's like anytime anyone writes any story about halo and snack foods either the commenters are like game journalism or the actual writer of the post themselves are like this is shameful first of all first of all let me just say cool ranch really tasty but let's also talk about the fact that writing a post that includes talking about snack food isn't like... Well, in what context? You... Oh, man, that joke's too good for you.

I want to put it on Twitter. What was the context in this case about the snack food there's some 7-eleven promotion where there's an app where you can scam products you buy at 7-eleven to unlock shit inside of halo 4 which admittedly is not the biggest story of the year but guess what there's people out there that want shit in halo 4 that probably buy shit at 7-Eleven. I wish the codes unlocked things in your Doritos bag. Like the bottom of the Doritos bag opened up and there were more

Doritos in the bottom. If I got a Kiltacular in Halo 4, I want more Doritos to appear inside of my bag. That's the kind of crossover I want. It's not like there isn't space, because they only fill them up halfway

anyway. Right, there's tons of room. Yeah. I'm glad we talked about the important things that are happening this week. They had that deal with the double XP. Like, people wanted to know how you got double XP. People, guess what? You may not give a shit, but there are people that give a shit. And don't act like that's all that we write is about Doritos.

I know. I mean, Laffy taffy fiddle faddle we write about all kinds of fiddle faddle we had that fiddle faddle fez promotion fiddle faddle fez is what it was called yeah but they they were cool with that because it was an indie it was an indie you get puzzle pieces if you eat 10 fiddle faddles okay cool by me. My name is Justin McElroy, and I know the best game of the week. My name is Griffin McElroy, and I know the best game of the week. My name is Griffin McElroy, and I know the best game of, like, the past three weeks. My name is Christopher Plant, and I am without power. My name is Russ Froschek, and I know the best game of the week.

Everything about you is the best. This is the besties where we compete. Well, we don't compete. But we talk about games that are competing for the top slot of the week. Competing for our love. Competing for our love like so many adopted children. Yes. I wasn't going to say adopted.

I wasn't. Not like that. And we have so much to catch up on guys does anyone remember what our current reigning champion is I think it's still Dishonored Red it is it's Dishonored revenge solves everything apparently

unless you're sneaky you know what else solves everything a little bit of tact not as good a catch sign though do you guys have any idea how well that sold you think it sold well well they said that it sold rather well i know they put out a press release saying that it sold rather well i don't you know those is that what it said yeah rather well bethesda entertainment says pretty good according to cinemax people would not throw dishonor red out of bed for eating crash that that cannot be worse than the press release I got yesterday,

which was our hearts go out to those involved in the tragic events of Hurricane Sandy. And if you would like the Assassin's Creed 3 official soundtrack, it's attached. I got so many of those press releases where it was like, hey, we just hope you're doing okay, that you're not underwater, and that you still have power. Here are eight screenshots. By the way, here's AppSpinnerCrazyTown on iOS. Check it out.

Yeah, keep it classy, PR. Well done. Good job, guys. So we have a ton of games to talk about this week. Well, probably the biggest, what do you guys say, the biggest release of the week? The biggest release of the week is the fact that two of the four people on this call are homeless, basically. Okay, well, but that's really more of a halftime.

I'm just saying, it feels kind of trivial. I'll be honest with you. I don't care about games fighting because two of my best friends in the world have refrigerators just full of spoiled lunchables where was this fucking where was this this compassion when i got derechoed where was this outpouring your derecho left you off the grid for what a week yeah that's actually pretty that's a wicked it's like a long time it was hot two. It was 100 degrees. I forgot about that already. The derecho? Yeah, it just didn't seem like a big deal because it happened to Justin. Right.

Right. And all six people that live in Virginia. That is the reason, that is the reasoning by which Assassin's Creed 3 is taking up more of my mind share than the storm you guys had or didn't have. It's still up for debate. I'm glad. I want to hear about Assassin's Creed because, you know, I mean, I haven't been able to play a game.

I've just been worried about, you know, important things. So I would love to hear about Assassin's Creed because, you know, I mean, I haven't been able to play a game. I've just been worried about, you know, important things. So I would love to hear about something. I've been so bored by the soup kitchen that I've been helping out at that I just want to think about something else. I mean, sure, Maurice Stoudemire needed me to help pump out the water from his parking garage.

It's not a big deal. It's not a big deal that they have to, you know, worry about being killed by, you know, wastewater raiders by wastewater raiders kicking in their door. I will be the Shirley Temple that delivers you guys from this debacle. I will be the one that lifts your spirit, to buoy your spirits with how much I don't like Assassin's Creed. What is up with this people it's very divisive i've been seeing they're kind of all over the place am i the only person on the call that's played it yeah yeah i played a long previous session i've played the first oh

probably five hours oh wow and without sort of and a lot of people have been complaining about uh some story stuff in that first five hours i don't want to hear about story stuff and right and i got i wouldn't want to talk about it but okay the it is just constant the assassin's creed series has always had this problem but i guess i figured i, I had hoped that once it got to another numbered entry that they would have really revamped a lot of this stuff. It's just constant roadblocks to fun. Constant, like...

How many of those roadblocks are the British guy with the bow tie? Sorry? Is there a British gentleman with a bow tie? There may be. There's a lot of white British people. I don't, I'm having a hard time sorting them all out but like for instance that you'll just in like the few hours i've played i've already had to restart a checkpoint twice because uh because my dude froze in a position and wouldn't move i actually it got at one point I got stuck under a haystack

and couldn't get out no matter what I did. The only thing I could do was whistle. So I was whistling at passers-by soldiers in the hopes that one of them would come attack me and break me out of whatever lock I was in. You were hoping that some

homophobic soldiers would cross your path? They'd think, oh, well, it sounds like trouble in that haystack. I'm going to get in there and see what's up, and then I would be forced out. Not, hey, did that haystack just try and come on to me? I'm a married man, haystack!

Hayophobic? Yeah, go on. It's just not, I mean, like, you're riding a horse. Can I give you a question and answer? Because I want to know what's broken. Yes. That's what I'm worried about.

So when I played a little bit of this, I was, like, surprised how unfun it was to run around, which, call me crazy, but that seems like the central, you know, other than the assassinating. I would say climbing and running. Climbing and running are what i uh i remember being so great about these games and i had a lot of trouble doing it uh i would just get stuck on stuff so is that is that because is it because i what i am most worried about and the reason that i i love this series a lot i even love the super convoluted dual storyline thing um what worries me is the central conceit of now you're climbing trees because that doesn't like there is a there is a a known language to climbing buildings in

assassin's creed you can look at a building from a hundred yards away and figure out exactly how you are going to get up it or at least know you you know, okay, I can find a path up this thing. A tree to me, like you don't have that. It's not based on a horizontal and vertical grid, you know? It's thinner. I mean, that's like the obvious problem. It's hard to say because I have not climbed a tree yet. Okay. It is not.

I have not seen a climbable tree. The game is entirely disingenuous because the advertising for the game is entirely disingenuous because the advertising for the game says it's all trees. All trees. Trees and low roots. Without getting into the spoilers, yes. Okay. Yes, that is correct.

Apparently there are trees later on in the game, though. There are trees later on in the game, but at the beginning of the game, you're not going to run into a lot of trees. No trees. Or at least not climbable trees. You will not that ability anyway that's not the fucking phone i can climb a tree in real life i know i can't jump from a building to 20 stories up and survive though you uh you they've made uh they have secondary objectives in every mission going on constantly, and that is not new, I guess, but they made them so prominent that it's really hard to have a good time because you're constantly obsessing about the secondary objectives.

And, like, when you fail one, it's literally, like, big red X. Like what? What's an example of that? Like, okay, here's an example. There's a chase sequence, sequence right so you're on a horse and you're trying to catch a guy you you're running across

and you're trying to you know to catch up with him and you run into these like powder keg type deals that you can shoot with your pistol sometimes since there's no, like, aiming or anything, sometimes he'll take aim at the barrels. There's no way to know if you're close enough or not.

Like an auto-aim? Right. But you don't know, like, what range you need to be at, so sometimes it just doesn't happen. Sure. Sometimes you tap the button and it doesn't fire. Sometimes you need to get closer before you can fire. Sometimes, like, one out of times, you don't automatically reload.

And reloading takes like, no exaggeration, like 15 seconds. Well, that's accurate. Right, it is accurate. It actually took people that time. They made it easier because it used to take three to four days to reload a weapon. Right. Sometimes a son would have to finish loading a gun after his father passed away, that his father began.

But sometimes that animation just doesn't trigger. So you get to the next barrel and your gun doesn't fire. So I could have just caught the guy probably first try but because i'm fiddling with these secondary objectives that they're making like so prominent and seem so important and you really don't know what effect having them or not doing them will have is this just your own ocd projection no no you don't know i have no dna fart points like does it really matter i have no value i have no like um i have no metric for what getting them does like i i don't know what it what it's worth so it's hard for me the real ending to pass it up like i don't know this could be the war on the line like but that's just

like a small thing you're constantly getting hung up on like little edges and you're you know you're uh the controls are still pretty convoluted even though they're supposed to be uh more streamlined in assassin's creed like you're always yeah to me anymore the perennial like assassin's creed moment is i'm gonna leap out and stab a fool oh wait i just bumped into him and i there's a saver in me that's like the the the assassin's creed uh like essential gameplay loop at this point and i'm sure that there are fun parts beyond where i'm at i'm sure at some point it will be an open world that i can cruise around in and do some assassinations and and do some things that I like about the series, but so far

everything... I've been in three instant fail stealth missions so far. It is barf task. You've been spotted. You lost synchronization. You got too far from the guys you're supposed to eavesdrop on.

You lost synchronization. I'll still play it, though. I want to know how this... I want to be clear. I'm only saying negative stuff, and that's just because so far my experience has been... There's only negative things. Yeah, right.

And hopefully that will change. I will say, though, the environments are dazzling. They are absolutely jaw-dropping every every you know uh every adjective i could heap upon them they are they are fantastic like what dreams may come level or what are we talking about we're talking about it feels like like time travel basically i feel like i'm there okay you are there and the sound design is amazing too and you would know about time travel because you have experience already right i've been through that before they've got a sound for when you're stepping on snow that it is astounding it sounds

exactly like stepping on snow i don't think you need time travel to know what that sound sounds like it sounds exactly like stepping on snow yeah there you go we didn't even need a machine to do that we have our own uh what is it called gap for no so that's assassin's creed 3 i'm hoping that i'll be able to i don't even like want to submit it for like official consideration this week until like some of us have played it and and i've gotten a little deeper into it is that but i don't know where that fits in with like our rules we'll see how busy the next few weeks are yeah we yeah we might yeah between halo 4 and some other ish we might have time to to come back to it sneak it in okay um what's what game am i bringing i don't know did you play anything this week we're

not bringing individual games anymore yeah yeah well that's true but how about how about next up we talk about a game i played okay let's do that uh i played a game called hotline miami hotline hotline miami uh in the game you play as basically a serial killer but you're just at the beginning of the game it takes place in 1980s miami i guess i should do some scene setting yeah please uh takes place in 80s 80s miami exterior day miami 80s guns cocaine great cocaine our final draft cubans being put to good use uh so it takes place in the 80s you are a you know do nothing punk uh living in a crappy apartment and you start getting threatening voicemails that you need to go about killing people uh and then you do that you each mission is a voicemail and then you go to a location and then

you kill lots of people with a variety of weapons uh in really violent awful awful ways. And the game is kind of a try and repeat game where you find out the exact fastest, smoothest way to kill everything without being killed because it's basically one-hit kill. So if somebody shoots you, you're done. Oh, wow. So you bust in a door. You grab, you know, the nearest weapon. You jab it through someone's neck.

You steal the gun. You shoot three people who are coming to get you. You run around, you know, the someone's neck, you steal the gun, you shoot three people who are coming to get you, you run around the back entrance and then surprise the other two guards and take them out and the mission is over. When done well, a mission can take a couple minutes, but you play it for hours. You turn the crank and hit the plank and

shoot the ball right down the chute. That's how it goes. Awesome. I know how that ends, by the way. I don't want to spoil it for anyone. The mouse gets trapped. The great thing about this is there's the same joke in cooperative this week. I thought you were doing Grape Escape, which would have been much more appropriate. Oh, my God. Oh, my God.

Grape Escape is getting so much attention lately. You're aping our cooperative. We're just doubling up on board game humor. Yeah, so that's the really basic gist of it. It is, I think, incredibly subversive about video game violence, despite being one of the most violent 2D games I've ever seen. Well, okay, so we discussed, what was the game, the GTA-style Retro City Rampage? Yeah, it is the exact opposite.

It's all neat. Because graphically it looks very similar. It looks like a 16-bit take on GTA. Yeah. Top-down perspective and everything. The difference being there are very few, if any, references to other games. There are references to movies, but it's a gameplay that you haven't played anywhere before. Like, I mean, somebody came up with a game mechanic, you know, and they made a game out of it instead of just stealing or borrowing, you know, 20 different games.

I don't totally understand. So it's top-down. Top-down. And you're using a mouse to, like, aim? And you use a mouse to aim, and you use WASD to move around. Okay. You right-click to pick up a weapon, and then you left-click to shoot it. Okay, we're getting a little too nitty-gritty here.

I didn't need to know. No, the nitty-gritty is important, because the n nitty gritty is the reason I didn't like it very much. And the other ability you have is basically to push a door open into people to stun them. Okay, so open a door is your other ability. Yeah, yeah. And, yeah, open a door, pick up weapon, and use a weapon. Guys, I'm starting to think I could be a serial killer. I'm starting to think I'm cut out to be a serial killer and an assassin.

So Justin didn't like it. What's the matter with it, Justin? I did not play it for very long, but I had a real hard time getting past the controls, which I thought were really, really pretty poorly handled. Really? The fact that it didn't have controller support from the jump is like crazy to me. It is, to

give you a perhaps more easier to grok metaphor, it's like a dual stick shooter if the right stick was mapped to a mouse and you didn't shoot, you had to do melee

attacks. Like, I found it really hard to get a hang of it. That does sound worrying. I do think it takes some getting used to. Honestly, having played the game, I would not want to play it with a controller. Why? Because I think that there's something very specific about the sensation of aiming all these things precisely with it

and pointing at stuff that I felt like I was, like, I know how to describe it i felt like i was like grabbing a knife and then having to zing around and like actually throw it somewhere but i feel like wowing the right with the right and i hate this this is awful and i know this is bullshit boy the pc snobbery just does not take long become the the leader of the best three thousand dollars on a gaming pc that's what no i expect i feel like it would be too easy. I feel like these controls capture the speed of it so much better. The crappier controls, are you saying? For the casual console soft core.

Yeah, I hate all of them, just so you know. I just want it to be on record. But I understand why you wouldn't like it. I would say definitely give it a try a little bit more. I would finish two levels. I think you would have it by then you know what makes me sad is that i'd want to play it on my macbook air because it's like lo-fi like ftl but it sounds like i can't pc game sounds like it's coming to mac it's not on mac right it's coming to mac recent man ftl's good you could play with it i'll just keep playing ftl i don't mind can we talk about

need for speed most wanted no no we're not talking about that game yeah yeah i played that game no wait hold on hold on i've been playing that game in the storm i've been playing on vita we talked about didn't we talk about this game already no oh okay first plant would you say this is your game of storm this is if i had to choose one game game of storm wait for speed most wanted on on the sony playstation vita gentlemen can't we uh take a little break from video games? We've been talking about two video games for a while. Let's goose the break, and let's talk about really important stuff. We should.

Can I tell you how I got here? Yeah, well, we're going to battle stories for a second. Okay, so here's how I got here. So in case you don't know, I live in Manhattan in the power on downtown. Where exactly do you live? I live in the West Village. No, more specifically than that. I live right next to Mauriceris stoudemire can you give me an address and an apartment i live at awesome um fans if you can go there uh where are you i live a block away from

the water of the hudson where is the yeah the secret rock that you hide your key in underneath the rock um yeah so i had to walk to manhattan yesterday to try to get some power and a hot shower and all that stuff so this morning i woke up and i'm like i'm gonna walk from carol gardens in brooklyn to midtown manhattan this will take like two or three hours it'll be fun it'll be an adventure i walk outside i make it like five blocks and these two mysterious men pull up in a sev and i'm like you're going to manhattan and i'm like yeah yeah yeah and they're like get in the car now and i was like what no no no no no and like no get in the car and i was like oh yeah there's there's a rule that only uh cars with three or more people can go into manhattan today

uh so they needed a third person so So I trusted these two very strange people. Are you fucking kidding me? So everyone's doing it. I thought that living in New York was supposed to make you hard and crafty. Make you hard and tough. I feel like, have you ever watched TV ever? Did they have balloons? What was yours?

It was in a van. They had candy. It gets stranger. They were clean shaven i get in this i get in this suv uh with shaded windows oh my god so i get into this suv and they both have very uh unusual accents and i i start talking to them and what i i glean is they didn't know each other before but they're talking so much that it feels like a fake story they've been rehearsing or they're like oh yeah great to see you. You're from Texas?

I am. They have lots of cows there. It's like, oh, no, this is what they do to make me comfortable until we get to the, like. Yeah. And then what I find out is one guy is from Dallas, but he's an actor. So he just has an affected voice. But the other guy is from some country in, like, Eastern Europe, and I can't place it. And I'm like, hey, friend, where are you from? you from and he's like oh I didn't want to tell you

because of the day and all and I'm like what where are you from and he's like I'm from Transylvania and then he turned around and he looked at me while he's driving and I swear to God his face is just a pile of bone and flesh. There is no meat. It's all hollowed. I mean, he looked like a nice man, but it's just these rigid, scary bones. And then dark hollows under his eyes, and he's like, yes, Transylvania. And I was like, oh, that's really funny because I watched Dracula last night. Oh, that's a good thing that I'm sure that nobody from Transylvania has ever been told

in a polite conversation. Then he said, yeah, it doesn't paint our country in a very good way. I had to move out when I was very young because of the dictatorship and live in Germany where we were not welcome. I moved to New York 16 years ago and now I call it my only home.

Well, frankly, based on that, it sounds like Dracula does paint their country in a rather good way in comparison they've got castles true they've got animal life whereas you know the alternative the reality is horrible horrible dictatorships yeah maybe a few ladies get bit on the neck it's for the greater good compared i think that's just passion i think yeah i think but yeah i felt awful but then I found out that he makes massage oils, and he sells them to supermodels. Out of human fat. And then the actor went, oh, you work in video games?

Yeah, I audition at this place called Rockstar all the time. They have this new game coming out. And I was like, yeah. And he's like, yeah, a new game that I auditioned for. It was called, I'm like, yeah. And he's like, man, I don't remember it. Son of a bitch. Ping pong alley two.

Yeah, I'm going to smack this ball so good. How was that, guys? Another take? Here comes a big sweet spin. How was that? Did you like it? More passion. Going to paint the line.

I think it was probably for Oni. Oni, you gotta get out! You gotta rescue your sister, Oni, too! I thought you said Odie, like the dog from Garfield. Yeah, that kid. Rockstar is making a game starring Odie the dog from Garfield. He's addicted to heroin. Nermal's his supplier.

She's so on downers Well that's far more interesting than mine I just had to walk down 23 flights from my apartment Which is now just sitting in the sky In complete darkness It's really kind of depressing Have you guys gotten estimates for getting your utilities back? They're saying Friday or Saturday

Today we're recording this on Thursday But so far we've been out. So the power went out on Monday night. Where are you guys staying now? I mean, now I'm staying in Carroll Gardens, which is in Brooklyn. And I'm staying with my girlfriend's dad and his wife. How is that? That's an interesting step in our relationship.

Can't say I had it on the calendar penned in but uh you know the alternative could be a lot worse at what point in a like multi-day stay do they ask about kids oh boy no he he's he's been all right about that um but it it's been uh it's been a little intense at times it's hard to live in a living room for an extended period of time i feel like a homeless person or a college kid what is the uh what's the what's the vibe like there is it is it people trying to get back to normal or is it well i think that city is broken in half right now it's sort of uh they're the people above 20 yeah the haves and the have-nots. If you've seen, what was that movie with Butcher Bill? Yeah. You know what I'm talking about?

Gangs of New York. Gangs of New York, thank you. If you've seen Gangs of New York, it's pretty much that. Because essentially, at 34th Street, there's a giant wall of darkness. And there's no power beneath it. And those people are living hand-to-mouth from food trucks. Whereas everyone else is just going to Sparrows and having a good time.

The one percenter is at Sparrows. It's weird seeing how people react. I was walking around the day after the storm and I smelled this just delicious, amazing meaty smell. I turned the corner and there is a sign

that says free meatballs and tri-tip steak. Oh. And I turn and it's like a kebab shop and they would just give us all the meat because they had to empty the fridge in return for tips. That's nice. It's not really free. That's kind of like saying the museum

is free because they guilt you into it. No way I'm paying Neil deGrasse Tyson. He's doing just fine. I'm coming to New York next week. Are you guys going to have it all fixed up for me by the time I get there? For you, yes. It basically just sucks living in a city that's hamstrung, which is to say I don't want to say this.

Welcome to every city that isn't New York for the past 60 years. This is what all cities are like. You want to talk about Chicago was under like six feet of snow last winter for close to four months it was the biggest bummer ever oh that's chicago chicago yeah do you guys want to can we talk about games let's talk about another game for speed it's the pool break is the pool break over the pool break is over just just tell me the McKittrick Hotel is okay, so I don't have to worry about it anymore. Tell me they're fine.

I've been wearing the mask as I run around in the darkened streets at night from Sleep No More. The whole city is Sleep No More. It is. Everybody. I just go up to people and do dance moves. They love it. So, guys.

Yeah. Need for Speed Most Wanted is really, really, really good. Okay. So, here's the deal. Chris Plant feels a little... He's been crowing about this game for months, and then it came out, and now he's a little down about it. I love it. I love it, but you have to know when something you love has a few problems.

You've got to know when to hold them. The things that you picked out in your review are not wrong. Things like the fact that there's a ton of cars in the game, and to find a car, you just have to find it in the map, and then you use it, and then you can jump back to it at any time. You have to jump back to it. That's crazy. What?

You find the car in the street. It's in a barn somewhere. The only way to reuse that car, it automatically teleports you back to the barn why does that make any sense yeah well there's there's several locations for each multiplayer there's three tops yeah um so there's that uh there's the so it has boost like every other burnout game had boost you get boost for like driving in oncoming traffic and doing near misses and slip streaming and crashing cars um but you have to it's one of the unlockable customizable parts of that car ridiculous and you have to do it for every you have to do it for each car um which basically just means when you find a car the first race you basically have to do

is the one that unlocks the boost for that but you have to drive to every race at least once so that first race could be six miles away okay you pointed that out that part does not bother me so much because there really is so much to do and ultimately it's just more driving to get from event to event like i think it would kind of be how how much have you played i played it's a lot pretty old i don't think it hasn't gotten old for me yet i i just think if you were choosing these events from a menu then the whole thing about it being in an open world would be pointless because nobody would drive everybody would just choose stuff from a menu that's accurate yeah i i i it doesn't bother me because when i'm driving to events i like i will find like two or three hidden things along the way whether it be like a billboard or a new car um there's a

levi's store huh is the levi's store in it or kfc yeah you can go to kfc and eat your car will eat chicken to get speed points awesome speed points are non-redeemable for anything okay so uh those are the things that that the the game's problems are all based around its interface and chris you said in your review that you kind of hope that they can be fixed and maybe they can maybe their design choices but the core game itself is phenomenal i the last time i was trying to think the last time i had this much fun playing a racing game and it was it was the burnout games um it just feels great each car feels totally different and the events each car has five events uh based around uh sort of the strengths of the car or not the strengths but the attributes of the car like like the one that can drive yeah well like no

like you'll get you'll get like a buggy like a four-wheel drive buggy yeah and that will have you like driving around in mud pits and stuff or like the formula one racer will just be like a big straight away yeah the ford trucks were my favorite yeah the ford truck gets a top speed of like 95 miles an hour but like it takes so long to accelerate up to that point so you are basically once you get it there just nursing your speed as much as you possibly can um the the event types are really cool my favorite is uh the speed run one where you have to uh you you do a race from point a to point b and the whole time it's tracking your average speed for the race and what average speed you

finish at is what you clock um so you're basically having to make sure that you are going as fast as you possibly can all the time interesting yeah um it's it's really cool and just the the normal races feel great the the art of like you know winning a race while simultaneously taking out your opponents, just like in Burnout, like, is in rare form here. The kind of bummer thing is that there's no crash cam. Right. Yeah.

And the crashes are not even close to you. I would even say, maybe most wanted, that crashes are very simple. Yeah. So this is what I don't get about Need for Speed, most wanted, because I feel like, essentially, it's Paradise, right? It's Burnout Paradise. But it feels like a lot of the things that i found charming about burnout paradise which were like well it's bright and kind of silly and light-hearted but looking at this in like demos and stuff like that it looked like very charmless and dry and serious there are exceptions i think

it's an eye-searingly beautiful i, especially when you're going like 160 miles an hour and just the world, you just get crazy tunnel vision. It looks fantastic. It's beautiful, but what Russ is talking about is the crazy stuff that you can not only see, but also do. And tonally, like, it's so serious. What's weird is it's like they had to make a Need for Speed game, and then they found places they could put the Burnout Paradise stuff.

There's basically an abandoned Air Force hangar that's been turned into an X Games-like type of place. There is this giant Central Park, kind of European park-type place where you can jump hundreds of feet. I mean, just achieve absurd heights that are like san francisco rush there's this like modern uh public art that is you know in the in the middle of the square that you can drive on i don't approve of public art uh but there there are those things it's just it there's so many it it is multiple things at once yeah it is a need for speed game and it is

a burnout paradise game i i will say that over any other burnout game the multiplayer social hooks yeah are like out of control yeah they've gotten very good at that it's it's there is it could it could be the like outline for integrating social features into your game regardless of what platform you're working on because every single time i see like um like shipwreck from cheap ass gamer like beat your time on this race by three seconds it's like well look at this name dropping here fancy yeah friends with shipwreck or maybe uh tom cruise barack obama maybe for me and barry obama barry obama um but but it's really well tied in it's in the uh you have a menu that you operate entirely with the d-pad so you can use it while

you're um driving one of the entire like menu categories is suggested things for you to do that are all tied into these things like it'll tell you this is an accomplishment that you can get with this one attachment for your car that nobody's gotten yet so you can be the first person to do it and get bonus points cool um it'll shipwreck shipwreck hasn't gotten there yet no i know i expected much much more from him really um and it's like the speed wall before you trace it's basically it's take like the, oh my God, I've got to beat that guy above me on the leaderboard mentality of like Geometry Wars 2 or Super Hexagon. But it's also tied into like a really rewarding progression system and single player race

system. Like when you win a single player race and unlock the stuff, like some of those races are really hard, but when you beat it, it's like, yeah, I've got all this new stuff and i beat all the ai and i accomplished this mission but then you've also got the speed wall there saying well yeah you did it but if you can shave like a few more seconds off your time then you can beat this friend on your friends list like it's so seamlessly integrated how did you feel about the ai because that was the other thing that was a little bit uh off and for me. There is a... Okay, yeah. I just want to bless you.

Even though Russ is giving me the wrong thing. I don't really give a crap because I think it's really interesting. You're finishing laps in this game. And this happens on the beta version too. The front four people are always a mile ahead of you until the final race.

I felt like I was never in a race until the end. Until the final lap game? Until the final lap, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's like, and there are a few things like that. I also felt like the police are used as rubber banding, where it would be like, if I somehow managed to get ahead really, really early on, the police would demolish me the second I got in. I would be on one of those, like, land speed setting desert rockets.

Yeah. me the second i would be on one of those like land speed setting desert rockets yeah and a a police and like a ford escort would be keeping up with me like yeah there's there is some weirdness i i'm still finding it difficult to evade police like the problem with the police is that it constantly your wanted meter keeps going up as you are being chased by them and once it reaches a certain point they are just going to be on you like like stink on shit like they are they are unshakable at certain points and what sucks is while you're being chased you are building up points the game has a leaderboards leaderboard system which all your friends show up on and also like the top 10 in-game ai racers show up on so you're constantly like passing people and being passed by people and you can get points by doing races and events

and stuff like that but you can also get points by like leading the cops on this crazy chase but you don't get all those points if you get busted so you'll be like going racing just get stitches you'll getting be getting chased by the cops for like 10 minutes and build up like 30,000 points like oh my god if i can get away with this and i i just never have i don't want to brag but 56 styles oh my god my record well that's pretty good well done gentlemen you clearly are both racer extraordinaires it's a great game racer it's a great i am not a racing game fan the only the only game in this front like the only uh franchise in this whole genre i like is burnout yep and this um this this fits the scratch scratches the burnout itch if you will

yeah sure uh what about but what about my punch itch yeah that's a good question what about the the itch to punch that i need say if you if you had a desire to punch skeletons in the face would need for speed mosted really fulfill that desire? I feel like it maybe wouldn't be the best. I don't think you'd probably want to do that. No. There's no bipedal humanoids in Need for Speed at all. It's all cars.

That is a crime. That is a war crime is what that is. Because honestly, it's not a game if you're not punching bats in the face. is what that is. Because honestly, it's not a game if you're not punching bats in the face. So obviously, we're talking about Not a Butterfly. We're talking about Punch Quest. Oh, yeah. Sorry.

You're right. Punch Quest. Correct. Punch Quest. So me and Justin played Punch Quest. Punch Quest is an iOS game. It is free to play, but do not let that discourage you because it is absolutely terrific um let me i'll give the rundown and justin feel free to jump in here if i'm missing anything

essentially you are a gentleman or a lady you can pick either one and uh your objective is from to run from left to right for as long as you can, this is sounding familiar so far, but what you're introduced to is a series of RPG-esque mechanics as you're running from left to right involving punching monsters and picking up treasure and executing combos and earning super moves.

And it's essentially like a, you know, forever runner that we've seen many of, but with a very deep sort of combat RPG system built into it. And it's incredibly charming. And the art style is sort of like NES, Super NES era. And can you, can you, can you kick? No, you cannot kick. No.

Because that would be kick quest. And that is for racists why because race is like kicking i guess uh it doesn't justin what did what did you think about this game uh it's all right um i'm i'm i'm very i'm very susceptible to this sort of game and we don't have a good genre descriptor for it. It's an auto-runner. An auto-runner, but the key thing

is the upgradeability. There's tons of different powers you can buy and mini-missions for every run. Right, that's those two things that you just said. Part and parcel. I'm going to be more specific because Justin is selling it short. In a lot of these temple runs, you're like oh i unlocked the invisibility power up and every once in a while i'll see the invisibility power up in this it's closer to actually call

duty where you're picking your perks almost and uh before you even start around and what you're trying to do is find that perfect balance of like oh these perks plus this equipment uh yields a better result is that really that like that's a big difference jetpack joyride has that same stuff yeah so it's similar to jetpack joyride but jetpack joyride is very simplistic in terms of what you're doing you're just dodging uh you know with single tap you just dodge electricity what have you in this you're literally you've got straight punches you've got uppercuts and as you're building up your combo your meter will increase and as your meter increases you earn more of the perks that you chose at the beginning of the round so

essentially there's a lot of strategy into keeping your combo meter going so that you have all the perks going at once and then you can mix it up once your round ends and try something new to try to get better i don't think okay this is where we get into trouble though what strategy is overselling no there's a lot of strategy to keeping your combo meter that's a lot you just you just keep punching you're just there's no point at which the answer is not to punch well that's actually not totally true because if you punch like spikes, you're dead. You'll get killed. Okay. Okay. Okay. Right? You can't punch spikes.

I mean, guys, I don't want to take sides, but Russ makes a great point. Yeah. Okay. What about, can you punch fireballs, Russ? No. Well, unless you have the perk that lets you reflect fireballs with a fist, which you can get. What up? But I don't understand why they don't have that for spikes.

Well, they do have for spike shields. You have that option, but not true spikes. What I'm saying is that... There's strategy to it. I honestly believe there is. Okay, but not in the gameplay. That's what bothers me about it. Yeah, in the gameplay, there is.

What? I'm telling you. So you're going up against a certain... Punch and don't get killed. A certain enemy has different ways around it you might jump over the enemy you might do a slam attack on the enemy you might block first let the enemy attack and then attack him it has a strategy of say rock paper scissors uh yeah except punch punch upper punch uh punch in the air pretty sure the world was saved by

rock paper scissors in a little movie called war games so okay um so i i don't know it it hasn't grabbed me i think that the the powers themselves are not different enough and there aren't laid out um in such a way that you can really tell what the difference is for some of them for some of them it's pretty obvious but for others it's not as prevalent and i also don't see why and maybe i just don't know where to look but after i finish a thing it doesn't make my um score it doesn't show me how i rank in my all-time scores it shows me how i rank against friends oh yeah it'll show you local scores as well in your in the scores list but like it doesn't show me, oh, what do you mean? It shows... It'll show both friends

and all the scores that you've done locally. Yeah, that's weird. That's poorly done. Well, I thought that's what you wanted was seeing both friends. No, well it's very poorly handled. It's visually poorly handled. You're looking at a leaderboard and when you scroll to the very bottom

or, you know, wherever you end up on it wherever one of your score slots is, it just says local in big letters yeah it's a little weird that's i one other i genuinely i like the game i've played it a bit it's fun it's fun to play like the controls are are sublime yeah i just don't like every piece of press i've seen on it is like this is the new free-to-play mobile messiah this is this is jesus the video i think a lot of that has to do with you know the standards being so low for free-to-play games i think it's a very very good free-to-play game but obviously you know people it's fun i'm not saying it's bad it's just like it's not gonna hook me in the way that like uh

It's not going to hook me in the way that, like, 10 million. Game Dev Story. Game Dev Story, 10 million. Well, those are all for pay games. I do want to say one thing about the character customization, which I found really cool, is that it's very robust. So you're picking your hat. You're picking your facial mustache. You're picking your skin color, your paint color.

Do you get to pick your ass mustache too uh you do actually guys i've been working with this ass fu manchu lately it's awful when i wear my running shorts the tails hang out both pant legs that's very awkward it's real um i i and to be honest i really like the game and i feel a little bad because the game is tanking financially because inside the game there's no it's very difficult to find how you give these people money and yeah for a free game they do not yeah they do not prioritize their monetization and even when you do find it it's not really like stuff that you'd really necessarily want to pay for it's just like a bunch of coins that effectively you can get just by playing the game i feel like such a i feel like such a shitty person because when i when i play a game that i'm excited about and then it comes out

and then like you turn it on and within the first five minutes it's like you can unlock 12 more rainbow pops for a buck 99 uh i'll delete it right away from my ipad and say oh i hate all these these payment options and then when I play a game like this, and then it tanks, I'm like, well, maybe you should have put more payment options in there, bro. Right, exactly. I think it's a very tough road to walk to not piss people off on either side.

Unfortunately, I think they went with the softer hand, and it's screwing them now. It's like basketball, essentially. Same thing happened to that game. I still haven't found a good good way to do it even when a game's super good you remember super magical and you guys play that one no there's a really really good like bubble pop game sort of with like rpg mechanics laced into it but you would hit these walls we're like oh you need this flying tiger to make it to the

next level and it costs you 80 000 coins which you will never ever get unless you pay a buck 99 for it it's like i'm an adult griffin are you still playing that super monsters ate my combo um that's that game has always been the the purview of my gf i played it a little bit she's the one who's really taking it and here's here's like my bummer about that game. I think I brought that one. It's a great game. I just want to hit this really quick. Russ. It's a great game. It's super competitive. It's like

a Tetris type of thing that I can play on the subway. I have gotten to an absurd level of high scores for that game. But to be competitive with high scores, I have to keep buying the three boosts that I need to basically play the game on top tier level.

And if that game let me pay... Is that the level that Shipwreck plays at? Top tier? Yeah, top tier. Okay. If it let me pay $10 or $15 to just have those boosts unlocked for all eternity, and I can just play this game the way it's meant to be played for you to compete with everyone else... Yeah, it's like Triple Town.

It's like that, too, where you can buy unlimited turns, and then you don't have to worry about it now i can compete with the leaderboard yep that'd be great that seems like such a cheap that's that is like among my least favorite like micro transaction oh i the boost regardless of how good you are at the game this guy who's paying a little bit more money is going to beat your like then i'm just gonna stop playing and games like um uh you don't know jack on facebook actually label people when they use those boosts and you're like oh whatever i don't care they use the boost they weren't even competing so it's good to indicate like who's paying money but yeah when it's hidden that's crap that's total crap man i forgot about that for my money you don't know jack on facebook is the

best free-to-play model i wonder how they're doing financially i can't imagine very well because i've never had any a reason to pay money for that unless they're doing ad supported which i don't see any ads on it but other like the system itself is brilliant anyway anyway i think we need to pick a game and i think um Punch Quest. Speed. God. Need for Speed. I guess Need for Speed was the only thing people liked. Okay, fine.

So Need for Speed wins, but I will fight tooth and nail to keep Dishonored. Well, I think we got to retire. Dishonored's been... I mean, I know a lot of those episodes haven't been released because of how bad they were, but... Two shows. Or one show that so I Dishonored came out two weeks ago effectively

okay I don't want to do this I don't want to I don't want to get rid of Dishonored it's god damn no no no Dishonored is no you have not played I have I played in a preview event no that does not count it counts no not even close I will fight

to the death over guys i'm going to i revenge here's all i don't care much about rules so i'm gonna i'm gonna retire dishonored and i hope that you join me in this and then we can have need for speed and we can get to this brawl when it matters it's not let's postpone let's postpone listen i'm i'm coming down with chris on this i i have enjoyed my time with Need for Speed more than I enjoyed my time with Dishonored. So let's table this. Let's come back to it at the end of the year. Fine, fine, fine.

Dishonored, let's put it on that beautiful golden yacht. Let's send it off into the sunset. We'll get back to it. We'll get back to it in, God, like a month and a half. Holy shit, this year, where's my life been? It's getting there now. It's getting there. Okay, so Dishonored, we'll get back. We'll catch you on the flip. Fine. shit to see it where's my life getting there now it's getting there okay thank you so dishonorable

get back you will catch you on the flip fine so my whatever modern warfare 3 driving wins what's it called what need for speed i think you had it right the first time uh so that it congratulations can we can we do a brief aside really quick congratulations need for speed is the vita version actually all that people are about um yes and no it is the exact same game right like it's the same world the same cars you're in theory playing the same game there are fewer racers on the track uh but it looks like ass dog do like it looks like the tech demo that they made to you know kind of test out the wireframes of the game or whatever words I'm just going to throw. They're like, no textures.

The lighting is this weird texture that comes at you. That stuff doesn't really matter to me as much on a mobile game, though. Here's the other thing. When you are playing, you know how fast that game gets, right? Yeah. And you need to be able to see a lot of things. Without some of the visual cues, it can be really hard to catch. That's a good point when i'm

playing regular big tv size need for speed i need to be like six inches from the set to see the headlights in front of me like yeah i can see that could be a problem but it but at the same time who cares man it's need for speed and you can play whatever you want the person that paid 60 would care or 50 would care so let's recommend a version of it. It's not that much money. And two, if you are obsessed like myself and Griffin, you will probably want to buy it. These are games I would buy on my own. Two copies. You're going to buy two copies

of the same game. Yeah, and they connect. You can increase your speed points. Using Kinect? And you can use iOS to increase your speed points. I think you're making up all this stuff. Nope, this is real. And Kinect support, you're saying. Oh, there is Kinect support. How come I can't see your speed points, Chris? Is it because your Xbox is underwater or something?

Fuck, I hope. I don't know. That's really concerning. You're friends with me, right? Oh, you're not friends with me on Origin. Oh, God. Can we revote? Because if Origin is hugely integrated into this.

Yeah, it is. Oh, my God. Friend me on Origin. It's my same username. That is terrible. No, I'm not friends with shit on Origin, and I see people on there. You can't see your PSN friends list through this?

I don't know. I'm telling you, it is integrated into Xbox Live. I have an Origin account, but I have not gone in to make Origin buds with a Z trademark. Now I'm freaked out. My highest scores better be up there we'll see i'm well with that um what do you think justin i think we should wrap it up yeah we're gonna call it thank you for joining us here on the besties we'll be sure to be back

next friday we we won't go so long without seeing you we miss you so much we had to do some soul searching we had to really go on that journey had to get in that big teepee, light up some payout, and we had to really explore ourselves, figure out what our destinies are, talk to the stars. So thank you for joining us for this journey to the stars. Go look for us on iTunes. Our RSS feed might have gotten kind of messed up a little bit, but we're there now.

We've got new art. It's great. Tell a friend that they need to listen to this uh and we'll get buck wild on them who do we have to thank for our new uh our new dope theme song uh that is well we pay for it so i don't want to think anyway well the guy who composed it his name is ian isn't it yeah but i don't want to thank anybody i don't want to thank thank Ian for making it because we paid. It wasn't a favor. Oh, I see. Right.

So it's sort of like when I go to Subway and I eat my Subway sandwich. I don't say, Subway engineer, thank you for preparing this for me to eat because I gave them $6 for it. Yeah. So thank you to Ian Dorsch for making our theme song um true or false that whole tirade was because you could not remember his last name it was it's hard to say but uh but we do appreciate it and for those of you that miss the old music uh we it's just time you gotta keep it fresh or something like that or something uh. So thank you for joining us on the Besties.

Make sure to join us again next week for the Besties because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games?