The Besties - The Besties Podcast 34

Episode Date: November 9, 2012

After a night of heavy drinking, some of The Besties aren't quite up to fighting form. And yet, they press on! In this episode, Assassin's Creed 3 makes its second appearance, and we give some props to some unhappy birds. There's also some mention of a horrifying juice cleanse. Oh yeah, and Halo 4. 05:20 - Assassin's Creed 3 21:00 - Knights of Pen & Paper 29:35 - Halftime: Polygon launch party 33:30 - Angry Birds Star Wars 39:30 - Halo 4 49:00 - THE DECISION Theme song by Ian Dorsch Get the show: Download MP3" Subscribe to the podcast (RSS) Subscribe on iTunes Get the full list of games (and other stuff) discussed at www.besties.fan. Want more episodes? Join us at patreon.com/thebesties for three bonus episodes each month!

I did a juice fast. How do you feel? How's your poops? It was really cleansing. Yeah. The original, I kind of rejiggered it. It was initially going to be a 60-day juice fast. Oh my God, that's not possible.

Instead, you went to Jamba Juice for lunch one day, and that counted. That was it. No, I was serious about this. I got a juicer a powerful centrifugal juicer oh the juicer that wouldn't come to you because of the hurricane correct right uh and then i got um i you know i got it's green juice you're you're living off of you got to have your kale in there and what have you so you get your protein in you gotta buy special kinds of wheat don't you special no no We're talking, this is my, my standard

juice was kale, lemon, ginger, apple, celery, cucumber. You did not get past half a cup. No, that sounds really good. I don't know. The juice tasted pretty good. Kale, anything with kale. No, the other stuff,

sometimes, but you can throw in whatever you want. You know, throw in a kiwi, throw in an orange. Let me ask you something. So, it's a juice fast. Essentially, can you make anything into juice and then it counts? Like a turkey leg? No, no, no. Yeah, throw a whole Dorito shell Taco Bell taco in there.

Throw a couple of fun-sized Milky Ways. You are ready to go. Yeah. That's pretty cool. I like that. I actually tried to make uh at the advisement of somebody else who had done this i tried to take uh my pulp one day and turn it into pulp crackers which is basically like you lay it flat you mix it with a little wheat flack with a little flax seed meal um and and you you you smush it out flat and and then you bake it, or you try to turn it into crackers. Do you do that before or after you rub hemp oil

through your long, long dreadlocks? You can actually use the hemp oil as a cooking agent, which works really nicely. The hemp oil helps to keep... Cut one of your locks off, you whisper a wish into it, and then you put that in your juice, and then it's wish juice. Yeah.

Takes a lot of hair to get a lot of juice out of it though this juice smells like a dave matthews band concert 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 Chris Plant, and I know the best game of the week. My name is Russ Foreshdick, and I'm really hungover. What happened? I'm really hungover. Oh, man. You guys are hungover.

Griffin and I, let's see. Last night was the Polygon launch party. And because of weather-related incidents, neither Griffin nor I were able to attend. So we missed out on the bitchin' hangover that you guys had. Yep. Had. I'm living it right now. Are living in the middle of. Russ Frustick's

elongated war cry at the beginning of every episode is like my north star. It's like what I use to navigate my way through the choppy waters of the episode. We are in the Bermuda Triangle right now. Can you give me something? Oh no. no yeah it's terror it's it's it's bad i think you hate it yeah but then when it's lopped off you

miss it so much it's like your penis it's like well there's literally it's like you paved paradise and put up a parking lot that's honestly what it's like or it's like you paved paradise and put up a parking lot. That's honestly what it's like. Or it's like cutting off your penis, like Justin said. Yeah, I like that too. So this is the besties where we take the latest games and we pit them against each other in a battle royale to see which one reigns supreme. We then pit that game against our current reigning champion to see if it dethrones it to take its spot in our Hall of Fame.

Russ Freshstick, what is our current reigning champion? It's Need for Speed, most wanted. Don't worry. For the rest of the episode, don't ask Russ anything that he doesn't need to answer because it sounds like he's still clinically drunk. But I feel like there was some confusion as to whether Dish dishonored got retired last week

and need for speed one or what what exactly happened dishonored is going to come back at the end of the year it's in the hall of fame okay yeah fine hall of faming okay well we're gonna boot out need for speed i'm sure today so it's fine have you still not like bought it and really spent some time with it i drove some cars you have not even played it yet let's leave it at that okay he's driven a car or two yeah so first off i want to continue basically the discussion we were having on assassin's creed 3 which i did not officially submit for approval of the midnight society last week you hadn't played very much of it last week and i think we are all uh at least me and plant are at the point where you were last week, and we've lived through the nightmare horror dreams that you experienced.

I still haven't touched the goddamn thing because of the discussion that we had last week. I have way too much on my plate to play some chaff, and I'm worried that that's what this is. It is profoundly depressing. Chaff is a good word for it, Griffin. I've now beaten, I've solved the tape. Iulated collectible is. But everything else I do. And enjoy doing it.

Go through methodically and do it. And in this game, I got to this point where I was like, if I don't finish this game, if I don't just rush through and do the missions i'm not going to finish this game because i am so displeased um i'll come back to me you guys are new to the experience what how did it how did i grab you i do want to reiterate what you were saying last week which is to say the first and i think you said five to six hours i think that's generous i think it's the first eight hours of this game are it's a tutorial like no kidding around and not like a fun god of war you're punching a kraken in the face tutorial it's like this is how you run on a building this is how you run on a

tree and it just keeps going and going and going i there's nothing you don't feel like a badass it's you just feel like you can't even climb a tree oh well sometimes you can't later i mean you can't climb a tree for the first three or four hours yeah you gotta level up that ability my my problem with it is they have a problem with not killing their ponies or darlings or whatever word it is that you want to use. They clearly had two or three ideas that were probably good on paper and could have been solved in an hour of game time. And rather than do that, they wanted to just tweak these little twists in the story to the furthest extent. The example I could give would be, imagine seeing The Sixth Sense, right?

And it just lasted like eight hours. You knew around an hour and a half that he saw dead people, but then they refused to say it out loud. Right. They're like, oh, you know, I don't know. He must see some people. They start using bad pronouns just to cover up what might be the secret. And that.

And it's not a good. It's the most. It's the most obvious thing in the world. And it's not like, I don't know. I was actually surprised. I didn't see it. The other bad thing is I don't want to get too much into spoilers. But just in general, I feel like there are a number of missed opportunities, specifically with the beginning.

But I think they had a good original idea that could have revealed a lot about the entire world and the assassins and the Templars. And what they chose to do with it is like, hey, let's have this amazing concept and then do more of the same. concept and then do more of the same the the weirdest thing about this extended tutorial and i don't want to and and i and i want to tell you it is not the main bad thing in the game it is part of one of many failures but the worst part that the about the tutorial is that there are huge mechanics that are confusing that uh are not covered by the tutorial let me just say let me just say as somebody who has not played this game at all nothing you guys have said the entire episode makes any sense give me give me some firm like non-spoiler shit about what sucks about this game okay let me let me tell you one thing you don't buy advanced weapons and armor and uh

upgrades in this game. Like, if you want to upgrade your dude, there's only one way you do it, and you have to make, you have to have artisans that work for you, that live on your homestead, and these artisans you unlock with missions that you have to do that are hidden all throughout the world. You do these missions to unlock these artisans. And then you have to find recipes for them to make these things. And then, like, if you want to upgrade to your sleeping darts, for example,

like upgrade the number of them you can carry, you have to find first the tailor that will make them for you. Wait, why is the tailor make sleeping darts she makes a pouch that can carry more uh you you can you find uh the the recipe to make this and then you have to go into a menu where you buy the materials you will need for this from the person that's going to be making it there is literally no they've but they've got the shit it's not even in the same menu if you look at a recipe and you see something you don't have you can't click on it to buy it you have to back out go to an original

go to another menu buy it from that person and then go back to the crafting menu to make it and sometimes there are things in a recipe that have to be made also so you make that first recipe go back buy the things you don't have go make the supply you need for your sleeping dart pouch or what have you and then you have to uh your artisan has to be of a certain level to craft these things. And it is never explained to you how the artisan's level, none of this system is explained. It's especially not explained to you how artisans level and get more, become a higher level. Artisan points. Artisan points, AP.

become a high artist in points AP so I will tell you this it is not repeatedly making things as it is in well logic and earth and also every video game to ever have crafting ever

it is not that I don't want to spoil it for you but it's not having them make things I'll give a concrete answer that is even more i think damning and have have any of you played uh army of two the 40th day yes it was directed by the same director as assassin's creed 3 and what's amazing is how many of the problems with that game just materialized in ac3 uh in the first six hours, it could just be a film because the A to B to C is so precise

that in a number of stealth missions where you're walking, you're not climbing or doing any assassin stuff, you're literally just walking from bush to bush. If you walk at a speed or tempo that the game doesn't want you to, it automatically forces you to restart because you'll be seen and you desynchronize but the problem is like army of two they decided that you only needed one checkpoint in a mission and that checkpoint is at the very beginning so you will get very you'll you know you'll evade like five guys which really is just watching them

deliver their lines like you're not actually doing anything. And then you'll get to the sixth guy, which is the one that is actually gamey and requires you to, like, have any strategy. And you'll mess up, and you'll restart and have to watch those five guys talk again. I mean, it's like... Maybe you'll mess up, and maybe it'll be a bug. Maybe his animation, his pathing will be messed up.

There was one stealth mission where I finally got to, like, the eighth guy I had to sneak past. And I got past past him save these people i needed to save and one of them one of the people i saved would somehow trigger the attention of the guards randomly no fault of my own and until i realized basically that i had to restart the entire game and play this mission and when i did it that time, I saved the people, and it launched a cutscene, and everything was okay. Oh, man.

I do want to mention, you know, obviously there's a lot of points to complain about this game. I do want to mention that this would be the only game that I can think of, correct me if I'm wrong, where a small Native American boy captains a large warship. True? Yeah, I think he's a teen at that point but yes you're correct okay a teenage native american boy captains a large warship and here's the surprise i love

their warship missions they're pretty good yeah they're good they're really good you can do missions and you like you can upgrade your weaponry and i don't think it has a good goddamn thing again with being an assassin like none of it has anything to do with like sneaky and i don't think it has a good goddamn thing again with being an assassin like none of it has anything to do with like sneaky sneaky i don't see anyone behind the cannons of that shit oh fuck oh no you can blend in with rocks and stuff with your never it never works itself up to a good pace most of the plot to me is like was like incomprehensible even when he's like yo sup i'm george washington you're gonna go slit slit some red throats and then you're like yeah i'll do it

for you and for america and then you do it and then an eagle comes and it eats the body uh you do transform into an eagle and go on a spirit journey also you i i have to mention one more thing because it was something justin kind of hit last week. When you do a mission, you have like four side missions you can do. And when you fail them, a giant red X appears and makes this awful noise. And it's like the equipment is like going – It's a whammy, effectively. It's a whammy, exactly. You literally read my mind.

It's like going through your life. A being dances across the screen. You accomplish like a great thing. Like you ask out, you know, the woman of your dreams. And she's like, yes. And it's like you could have asked her out better whammy your breath was terrible you got you did it married congratulations but you didn't get all the feathers whammy right rather than make it be a subtle thing that at the end you're like hey if you want to go back and play that again you don't't. But if you do, like, here's an option.

And the thing is, nothing is so enjoyable. The missions are so unenjoyable that you would never want to go back and go through them again. They're completely linear. It is completely prescribed to do exactly what they want when they want you to do it. And that, there are good ideas here. There are inspired moments. There are – it's a beautiful environment, and that's really cool. The combat is maybe a little – I don't know.

It feels muddier than it used to be. Huh? The combat feels, like, muddier than it used to. You don't have the counter kill thing, which is what I always used to like in Assassin's Creed, where you wait for the attack, you counter it, and then you kill the person. Then that's gone. That's not gone. That's still there.

It does not work on most people. You can occasionally pull it off, but it's not a one-hit kill. It's a you'll start leaning into the guy with four or five attacks, and usually that's long enough for somebody else to come along and attack you, and then you've got to counter him. Can we all agree that Assassin's Creed 2 was the ultimate peak?

No, Brotherhood. Actually, I think I might like Brotherhood more than Assassin's Creed 2. Yeah, I would say they're about tight. Brotherhood added a lot of stuff, but there also felt like there was a lot of unnecessary stuff in Brotherhood. I think I just have such affection for 2 because that world just absorbed me. I mean, it's either that or the iOS Gameloft Assassin's Creed game, I think, is probably up there.

How did this happen? How did things fall down this? When you have a company that's relying on two games, Just Dance and Assassin's creed and those games need to come out every single year this is what happens that's what it needed it it needed to be it needed another six months six months exactly polish it doesn't have it has all the basics are there but and it is clear at some point somebody just started cutting off limbs and was like, okay, we just need to cut this off and cauterize it so it's at least releasable. And it doesn't matter if it's fun or not.

We don't have time to playtest it. We can't. We've got to release it as is. And, like, I can't. And I think part of it I will own up to is part of it is the way I like to play these games. I will own up to is part of it is the way I like to play these games. I like to go through and do all the side junk and, and,

you know, feel like I'm having an impact in the world. Um, and it is made so profoundly unenjoyable to, to play the game like that. Um, there, I, you can get a courier mission where you have to go around town to give four letters to

people no one ever says what the letters are they never say anything else than thanks you've done a great service and i swear to god i had to deliver four letters in the same city to four people who looked exactly the same and i'll have the exact same bark when i delivered it like that's assassin's creed one bullshit why are we back there why are you not making a good game like you know how to do it well somebody in ubisoft knows how to do it maybe this team doesn't but the guys who made revelations were on it well not no no revelations no okay revelations is not great brotherhood is excellent i mean they know how i it's it's but here's the thing here's's the thing. Brotherhood came out the year after 2, didn't it?

Yes, but so that's the big trick is that so 2 had about 2 or 3 years between the first one and 2 coming out. Then 2 came out, set this awesome baseline for like this is what a kick-ass Assassin's Creed game is like. And then all Brotherhood was was building on top of that and adding more cool features. So it wasn't two years' worth of work. It was a year's worth of work. But in this case, how much time did they have to essentially do what Assassin's Creed 2 did?

Not nearly enough. I mean, they also don't have the brilliant game designer director that came up with all this. I mean, that is a pretty big part of it. Right. also don't have the brilliant game designer director that came up with all this i mean that that is a pretty big part of it right well so sad sad news and listen i know we're in the minority here and and maybe you are playing it and really having a good time i know a lot of people are are enjoying it but for me um i think a lot of that comes from the fact that people have played all of these games. I know that's why I kept playing.

If it had been just a random action game, like, there is no way on God's green earth I would have finished it. No way. But, you know, you play, what, four games in a series, and the fifth one comes out. It's like, well, yeah, and it's supposed to be the last, you know, at, four games in a series, and the fifth one comes out. It's like, well, yeah, it's supposed to be the last, at least closing off an arc. Of course I want to play it. Let's move on, because I'm really sad. Games like Assassin's Creed 3 make me really happy

I have a Gamefly membership. It seems tailored for that. It is. No, it's not, because it's your life it's your it's your lifetime that's what you're losing here you're using your losing your precious heart i mean i'm still gonna play it i'm still gonna play it i just you know yeah but he can leave after like a couple hours and just return it and not feel like he wasted exactly god i have done that to a depressing number of games this year let's move on i'm super bummed

let's talk about a really good game if you do play it and you you know get it from gamefly or whatever just don't get hung up on side stuff push through the game finish the arc um and and be pretty depressed that they didn't release a better game all right let's because it's a bummer it's you gotta go down that spiral of sadness as fast as you possibly can yeah just get down it to get to the bottom it's like drinking all of your kale juice you got to get to the bottom of it as fast as you can and then you can see the future outlined in the kale leaves at the bottom of the glass and the future is that assassin's creed 4 is probably not going to be very good either um i can i talk about my game

then yeah let's do knights um my game is an ios game it's been uh it's been in the works for a while you may have seen a teaser trailer for it maybe you haven't it's called knights of pen and paper and it is almost the kind of game that i have been like preaching for somebody to make on a smartphone forever like my kick has always been why hasn't anybody made dnd for for iphone because it's made for it like it is absolutely made for it this kind of takes that idea only it does more of an old school dnd than like the modern tabletop board gamey version of it um so basically you control a party of heroes that are customizable and you also control the dungeon master and all that you see is these people sitting at a table and the dungeon master and then the background like changes depending on where you are but

you are basically watching a like old school game of dungeons and dragons take place and you control both sides so like as the dungeon master you can create a quest for the other people to go on and then while they're on that quest like when they're in a battle or something like that you control the heroes um and it's really it's a really cute interpretation of the whole thing and more than that it is like really very very compelling like there are all kinds of classes to unlock and different all of the players um you first have to choose the player and the players are like i don't know they seem like the sort of prototypical people who would play dnd like you can unlock like a pizza guy or you can unlock like a nerd or a jock or your

little brother um and then you assign them classes and then they level up and earn new skills and you can find all sorts of equipment and uh go on all sorts of custom quests so i don't i'm getting a little confused here okay so you've got the dungeon i'm sorry you've got the human beings they're playing dungeons and dragons and are you leveling them up you are leveling up their their characters their but you can do stuff like uh with the money that you earn in the game you can uh there's like this big in-game shop and you can purchase you know items for your characters or unlock new characters or you can buy things for the room like you can buy snacks

for the table that will give your characters like temporary bonuses in battle doritos and mountain dew like decorations for the table or you can like buy a new look for the dungeon master or you can buy a new rug for the room or posters for the walls and everything that you buy has like in-game interpretations like they may increase your magic for a while or they may increase like the rate that you find you know mining veins in the game or stuff to unlock um that's surprisingly uh well thought out it's very very clever like the the progression systems are fantastic and for me that's like the most important part of a mobile game um and this has it in spades and it's like the production values are very it's very pixelated

and sprightly and uh it's it's it's actually really deep um in terms of like explore so like you're in a mission is it just like battle battle battle from the main town like you choose a quest by which i mean like you choose what type of quest you want to do um sometimes you can choose like what like if quest you want to do um sometimes you can choose like what like if you're going to hunt down items you can choose what the item is and then it tells you where to go and then you go to that area and then you can like create the battles so like if you have to find 20 of some item you can fight like one monster at a time and it'll be easier or you can elect to fight like five monsters at a time or like three really really difficult monsters like everything is custom tailored because you are

playing both sides of the table um so there's there's a lot of strategy to it also the game gets harder uh as as like time goes along so you're constantly having you can't just like camp out in one place and keep going you have to you have to keep leveling up your your dudes i i have a question yeah the the game was developed by a small group in brazil and it has a really bizarre translation do you think that is just you know a bad translation or that it is intentionally bad english like i haven't noticed it i haven't noticed it being that bad i maybe numbed those sorts of things but i i didn't think it was that awful um have you played it at all plant yeah yeah yeah yeah are you i think it's good i i i think it's really charming i think it

i i think at its core it's just like a grindy RPG, mostly. Yeah. With really, really cool art design that makes it feel more substantial than what you're actually doing, which is like grinding characters and not really going anywhere. It is very, it is very like old school, like Dragon Quest, like mega, mega grindy stuff um yeah but i think that that i think that that kind of stuff really translate if you're into that genre like it's perfect for for smartphones because you're not like having to worry about all these twitchy controls and you're not like if you're not super into like social features in games it is it is appropriately quite anti-social for a dnd game i just think it shows how you people should just really explore better art design or just slightly unusual ideas because it is amazing how much that look and the premise of you know being in a room that changes and goes from looking like your parents basement to looking like this dungeon

it makes the game so much more enjoyable well yeah and honestly like not to skip we're not going to skip ahead to a later game but look at angry birds the reason angry birds is such an enormous success is strictly 100 because of presentation because crush the castle came out and was essentially the same exact game but it looked ugly as sin and then angry birds comes out and it's like adorable and looks like a cartoon and that makes all the difference in the world and i think so many game developers shirk the like presentation stuff because they're like oh whatever it's just the looks i won't need to make sure the gameplay is amazing for me both

are so important for me it's it is refreshing to play a role-playing game on this platform, on my iPad, that you can tell, like, at no point were they like, well, what if, in order to take a turn, they had to eat energy crystals, and they recharge every, like, everyone is doing that. Square Enix released this game called Wizardlings recently, where you play a wizard and it is like a new Square Enix RPG for the iPad. Don't mind if I do. And it's like tap five squares an hour and then you can unlock energy balls that you can use to tell your friends on Facebook. It's like, are you fucking kidding?

Like just pretty good. It's great. I don't know. I feel like nobody is catering to that audience. Like the ones who are are square enix who are like releasing their old rpgs for 18 bucks a pop like i don't know i i just i just it seems like it is a a genre that doesn't require much from the controls of whatever platform it's on and like nobody's nobody's utilizing that really yeah it platform it's on. And, like, nobody's utilizing that, really.

Yeah. It's a rarity. If you have been hungry for this kind of game, I think it's going to scratch your back. I'm going to download it. It made me really hungry for, though. It made me hungry for just a D&D game that I can play with my friends over the internet on an iPad.

Christ. With, like, they made a Facebook game. Did you ever play that? The Heroes of Neverwinter? They made that game. And it was cool. You didn't have synchronous multiplayer, but what you could do was recruit your friends' characters,

and then they would get bonuses from you using them in their dungeons. They request, and it was like fourth edition D&D mechanics, and it was awesome. And nothing like that is on iPad. Yeah, but how many squares could you explore before you ran out of gems that's the thing like there wasn't there weren't i don't think i ever had to do any any microtransactions and i played a significant amount of the game i don't know just god wizards of the coast is becoming so i don't know to everyone's moving into tech and they're like what about paper it's

like papers all right but tech is good too your problem is paper right too much too much paper i think uh hey uh does anybody have anything else going on their life that aren't is it gaming related i was gonna just talk about our party a little bit. Yeah, how'd it go? So I think there was some concern. Let me, I'll load it up. As you probably heard in the introduction, we had our Polygon launch party last night. I'm still reeling from it, as are many Polygon people. There was some concern, obviously, because of the weather. Because the New York area has been battered by weather in the last two weeks first by hurricane sandy who's lovely and then by a

nor'easter named athena i believe i didn't even know they named nor'easters anyway uh there was some concern that people wouldn't show up especially since like justin griffin their fights got canceled a bunch of other polygon folks flights got canceled. But it turns out a whole lot of people ended up coming, and it was at this very cool place called the Classic Cars something or other on the lower. What neighborhood is that plant? Battery? No. Are you kidding?

Tribeca? I don't know. It's basically West Village still. It's like. It's still south of the West. Anyway. Oh, my God. No one could be less interested no anyway i i

wanted to say i think we have a lot to talk about about whether or not this is the triangle below a canal or at west soho you want to go into it a little more what do you think griffin i think that i hate everyone who has ever lived in new york city go on well the reason i'm mentioning this apart from it being an excellent party, so I got to meet some of our developers last night, which I really hadn't gotten a chance to do. My experience working with developers is generally like, I'll email them when something's broken, and they'll respond to me very quickly with a fix. And I'm always amazed by them being human beings. But meeting them in person made them incredibly charming to me.

And one in particular named David Zhao, who has been working on Polygon since the beginning, clearly, a brief segue, I went to college in Boston, and all the MIT parties were always the craziest parties. MIT kids went nuts. There's a lot of repressed urges, I think, that is involved with knowing how technology works. Right. Your brain sort of compartmentalizes into a work mode,

which takes up 98% of your life, and then that 2% of party mode is so extremely underdeveloped that people go insane. Yeah, they go hog wild. Long story short, David Zhaoow one of our developers uh went out last night at around i guess it was like 3 a.m and this is the tweet that he posted ow at polygon go sleeping my karaoke still for f pizza is really delicious duck where is my room card klein d more food and pizza now bend so it sounds like that tweet was written over the course of like two and a half hours like he would pull it out he kept going back to knock out a couple characters slip it back in his phone

because he got distracted by pizza i guess i like how it sounds like a transcendental poem yeah duck it is now it's haunting so uh yeah we had a good time it was a lot of fun and i'm still a bit have a bit of a headache but otherwise what did you guys do i justin you had a birthday yesterday yeah yesterday was my birthday um i. I went to get some Japanese food, cooked hibachi style, as is my preference. Can you make the volcano with the steam? Yes, he did all the hits. Awesome. Did he throw hot shrimp at your mouth?

Yeah, and I caught him, because I'm the birthday boy. Yeah, did you do that? Paint a picture for me because i need this you're sitting at a table full of strangers they threw a hot oily shrimp in your mouth and you clapped your hands together and we're like i'm a birthday boy uh yeah so i was like seal angerbird star wars is out and it is sweeping the nation have you played it i've got i've played it everyone played it no i have personally played it i gotta say though and i'm i'm i've put more time into this anger birds than ever i'm still not a big fan of anger birds as a game design i there's too much randomness for me to enjoy it but uh presentation wise this

is a delight i don't think that one there's no randomness it's it's physics you can still shoot it like well it's not like it's like you shoot it and then they spin a poker or roulette wheel well no i mean there is a rant that the um the way the physics are presented, though, introduces a randomness to the... I mean, it's like, would you prefer chaos theory? Yeah, do you remember that scene in Jurassic Park? Life finds a way. They put the drop of water on Helen Hunt. Not Helen Hunt.

Fuck! Ellen... Who was in Jurassic Park? This is more important than what you were talking about. No, Laura Dern. God damn it. The thing is no one plans on it's a little like worms in that regard like

I'm going to disagree with you strongly in a second but continue no one plans on the things it's just too common for an unintended consequence to happen and that's bullshit no i don't compare it to worms worms is like a chess we're not gonna get into this times 10 rust and worms is gross i'm amazing then i won't compare it to worms but still who's i agree a lot of times it seems random whether or not I succeed. And also the scoring seems random.

It seems to me that if I manage to complete a level with only one bird, then I should always get three stars. I would completely agree with that. The scoring is totally chaos. At the very least, tell me how many points I need to get three stars. It's like – Something, yeah. So at least I know what I'm shooting for. That being said and and plant

played this too so uh he can certainly attest to this i think the randomness is a lot more limited than it has been in previous games because more of this game is focused around like very accurate use of the bird's powers than it has been in previous games maybe you should set this up a little bit okay don't yeah should i since i threw you so um anger is uh star wars essentially you're obviously the birds represent the different characters in star wars we're talking about luke skywalker who's who we're talking about han solo who's also a bird uh there's a few other bird like characters and each of those uh birds have special abilities as they always have but these special abilities uh seem to be more thoughtful so in the case of luke he's got a lightsaber so he can like wipe away he can slash it like a wall but the bird still

keeps going so essentially it's a whole timing mechanic where you're like getting rid of the first like barrier and then using his momentum're like getting rid of the first like barrier and then using his momentum to like take care of the second barrier where is charger banks uh it's only original trilogy so yeah it's only original why would they go with the worst trilogy yeah i know yeah you know i love i love the big fat gungan the The king gungan. He's hilarious. He like farts. He farts and then Jar Jar Binks is like, mmm, so smelly. God damn it.

Fuck. To go off Russ, I think your problem with it, Justin, is you basically aim and then you let go and then maybe you hit another button and that button usually like makes the bird big or it drops a bomb but really it's kind of just doing a lot of damage that's kind of like what the angry bird is saying is like fling it and then hit the damage button and here there's more

choice like there's you actually can aim with han solo you can like aim somewhere on the back of the map and and shoot something way over there so you're actually choosing to do a lot more than just hit the hit the kill button uh and other examples of this is you can actually deflect things now so things that you can't even reach uh on a screen you can suddenly get by like having it enemy fire something at you and then you using lightsaber to deflect that and sending it way off in the screen so i think there's a lot more you can do in this game than any other angry birds where it's pretty much pull the bird back let it go and it hits the wall and knocks crap over yep there's a lot more depth to it also grito gets

shot in the face isn't isn't that chaos though what people love about these kinds of games i think it's what dumb people love about these i think that's what's good about this one is you can play it and just knock over all the crap that's that's what i loved about racketeer is that sometimes you'd pull it back and then you'd let it go and it would just fall impotently to the ground or sometimes you'd pull it back and launch it and it would just fall impotently to the ground. Or sometimes you'd pull it back and launch it, and it would go backwards and hit you in the face, like that one clip from the reality show where the woman got destroyed by that watermelon. Yeah, that was a good one.

That was a good clip. God, I loved Reketeer. So you loved Reketeer, as we all know. God damn, it was good. Was it really? No, it was a dog fart. Hey, let's talk about Halo. Anyway, I gotta say, as a as a non anger birds fan uh i'm

digging it i'm i think i will continue to play because you're right the it does introduce the powers introduce an extra level of of skill game like there's a game to it now that's that's yeah that's kind of what i'm getting at right it's not just a toy um it feels more game like while still keeping a good amount of randomness yeah guys more than i'd like i've gotta do something about this broner we've gotta talk about halo it's halo three finish the fight uh it's halo four actually let's do it tonight halo four play Halo 3 that's not the theme song it's hard for me to get like

jized when I turn on the Halo without hearing that I like the new song but now it's just like a lady like wailing and she sounds

very sad yeah but it was always that it was always oh well no it was like a monastic chant and back and down and like Stevie Ray Vaughan

is like hold on let me who actually does it? It was SRV. He was tuning up his Geekbox while over a monastic chant. And I was like, get a kill boner, is what I would say out loud. Have you guys, has everyone played it?

I played the first two levels. That's about where I'm at. And some multiplayer. I played about four deep in the campaign. i'm about level 12 i think in multiplayer um okay and that sounds very low it's uh it's it's probably my favorite i don't know about the campaign because i haven't really gotten that deep into it so far like i don't it seems kind of they introduce a character who seems like a major character in the canon but i have played every halo game and i do not know this guy from dick like oh not the doctor you weren't talking about

the doctor no no i know her because i actually did i actually i read the fall of reach um but no you didn't i did you read that whole book yeah it was good it was like it was like one of those old nintendo power novels um anyway uh they introduced some worlds of power worlds of power yes it was my fx9 yeah i read a metal gear solid the or i guess it was just metal gear the worlds of power anyway that's not jermaine what is jermaine is they introduce like the main antagonist of the game and it's like not him again and it's like guys i don't know who that is and you're guilty spark no they're like using his name and stuff and it's like oh it's i don't want to spoil it then i'm

like oh okay mr glass it's is it mr glass it's mr glass yes from unbreakable um he's back i don't know about the campaign but the multiplayer is like i'm having more fun with it than i think i would say so i obviously played for about an hour so not very much but i would say that the opening cut scene and i don't want to ruin it for people but the opening cut scene for the first time i think ever in a halo game it made me sort of interested in the character of master chief yeah it's an interesting storyline like the fall of reach actually sets him up in a way that like no 100 halo games ever could like it introduces the people always talk about he's this character he's just this empty box that players can put it like he's actually pretty well defined in that book um

but they don't do that in any of the games which has always been weird well yeah because people don't play games for narrative duh how many guns is it so um all i can really talk about is the multiplayer and it's good they've added a lot of progression hooks that really get my new hook. Well, okay. So how Call of Duty-y is it? It's pretty Call of Duty-y. Okay. What's strange is that they actually introduced some Call of Duty-y stuff in Reach, I guess,

like the challenges and the daily challenges. Oh, yeah. I got pretty into those. And so far, I don't know if those exist in in halo 4 i don't think they do um what the big hook for call of duty is its progression system but also like all of the stuff that they put in other than victory or defeat in a match they put in stuff like get a hundred kills with this weapon or get 10 kills with this attachment or do all of these that's a challenge though yeah they're they're challenges and those don't seem you were just saying they weren't in there i don't think they're in halo 4 is what i'm saying oh oh those

are those are like call of duty's bread and butter it gives you something to think about like an overarching storyline for your character outside of winning or losing a match um and i'm worried about that not being there like not being able to keep me enraptured in the multiplayer what are what are some of the things you're unlocking in multiplayer like everything like uh so your your guy like you have loadouts you have customizable loadouts for the first time in halo so you and it's not just aesthetic like armor and armor abilities and stuff like that like you pick which primary weapon you spawn with you pick which secondary weapon you spawn with you pick your grenade type you pick your armor ability and then there's stuff like uh there's offensive upgrades so like you can

take on an upgrade that makes your shield recharge faster or like you sprint everybody can sprint now without having to have that armor ability you can sprint infinitely um oh my god yeah i love it um so there's like so perks essentially perks yeah it's basically like an old call of duty you know create a class um so you're you're unlocking that stuff you're also unlocking spartan points every time you get a level so you have to purchase the stuff once it unlocks you're like having to make decisions about what you want in a build um which is interesting in the dialogue of halo because these weapons are so like you know what weapons you prefer in halo so now you're buying decisions are like so well informed at this point like it really

like the needler yeah the needler is actually pretty dope in this game you can't actually unlock the needler for your for your loadout that's how they measure it out like you can't actually unlock the needler for your loadout. That's how they measure it out. Like, you can't unlock the rocket launcher so that you always have it. It's like the basic rifles and pistols and stuff like that. So that part of the game has taken me over a bit. Justin, you've played it a lot. What do you think? Me?

I think it is good. I don't really understand the Dominion part of it. What does that mean? That is the big problem. There is no there there are a lot of new modes in halo 4 like dominion and regicide and flood and they don't i don't think regicide is new is it not i don't think so anyway they don't explain jack shit like they don't tell you exactly how these modes work and it's kind of dominion especially seems kind of confusing basically from i'm sure it's one of those things like once you understand it it's

the most obvious thing in the world topping in i've had fun when i've played it i just don't understand basically there are three there are three uh headquarters on the map and you have to capture them in sort of battlefield style and then those headquarters uh at intervals of like 30 seconds i think they get reinforced so like they'll get an automatic turret on top of it oh cool like weapons inside of it um so the longer you can hold it the better it is for you but it also becomes harder for your opponents to capture and if you can capture all three on a map um then it goes into sudden death mode and if you can kill the whole team the whole other team before they can recapture on the territories then you've won the game but you're also like

they're ticking off points for you while you hold them so there's a point cap that you're counting up to too so there's there's so how did you figure that out it took me like five matches to figure it out and my first you know i guess that's not too bad of a learning curve but like like a 10 second video could have explained that, and they decided not to put that in. Or an eight-hour introduction. Yeah, right. Some of the modes that are kind of like the flood mode,

it's basically like zombie mode from the past games where one player starts off as a zombie, and as they kill players, they get transferred over to the zombie, and you get points for kills on both sides, except the zombies are flood this time and they start off with like the lunging they look like flood like you basically

turn into flood instead of just like a player with darker armor and you have like special armor abilities that you can choose from I've had a lot of fun with that mode too that's pretty cool I do want to say it looks like a big step above halo reach graphically graphically yeah it's gorgeous like it's pretty amazing to see

this late in the console cycle making such a large jump um and also the audio they put a lot of work into the audio so all the guns were like sound like way more powerful than they used to uh i'm terrible at halo multiplayer it's yeah i'm not good at kill because it takes like 10 seconds to kill a guy with the shields and all that stuff i i was hesitant to buy it because i know call of duty comes out next week and i've always favored that multiplayer yeah that's my jam um for and it really is only for the reason that it only takes a couple shots to kill a guy. And that completely changes the whole dialogue of the multiplayer.

But I gotta say, I'm having fun with Halo 4. I think that I will continue to play it even after I'm playing Call of Duty multiplayer. I always feel like it's a better party game because it takes so long to kill someone that you end up having to work together. Or there's a lot more stealing people's kills. And it's a lot more. It feels a little more chaotic and fun. If you can find the rocket launcher, you can probably take out the best player in the room. If you aren't dumb about it.

Like, there is something to be said about that. But I don't know. I kind of prefer. I kind of prefer i kind of prefer the loadouts still aren't so finely tuned that you can build your like entire strategy around it because yeah because there's only like two rifles right well no there's like six but to some extent um you still gotta like even when you have your best loadout you still gotta like go around and scavenge for stuff yeah i don't care for that i don't care for that it's a very old school sensibility that doesn't like it just doesn't i'm not saying it's bad it's just like not what i prefer they did add some stuff

where it like gives you a hud like indication as to like where the super weapons are and that's that is so helpful because you don't have to like memorize the map um yeah and that's cool but like i i am what i love more than anything about multiplayer and first person shooters is defining like what my class is and like the pick 10 stuff that they're doing in black ops 2 just looks so like fucking compelling to me like i'm gonna get so deep into that like i i think it kind of it kind of makes this loadout system seem a little bit limited but that that being said no halo game has ever done it before and it is such a welcome improvement for me yeah good good step in the right direction

i dare say i think we have a very clear winner this week what do you guys think yeah yeah i think it's probably gonna be halo it seems oh i was gonna go with anger birds star wars but hey i have a question about anger where to start congratulations halo uh hail is better than most wanted yeah i think i'm i'll go with that i'm sure most wants good but sorry most wanted see you around forever what do you think i mean what do you think that though you've played we're talking about like god i don't know i have caught i have like most wanted has extracted from me these squeals of joy that i don't think any game has this year like it has these moments of punctuated like holy shit that i don't think i don't think halo 4 has got like halo 4 is such a good good game

i don't know guys don't make me choose yeah okay you don't have to because we'll choose for you we're not gonna bounce most wanted from two people who haven't played it yeah that's the thing chris i think i played most wanted no you had it for 20 minutes preview ch saw me play it. Chris Plant. Have you played Halo, Chris Plant? No, he hasn't. No, that's a problem. Oh, man. You know what? How about we bring this discussion at the top of next week, and I'll play Halo.

It doesn't work that way. That's in the show. Most Wanted cannot live in perpetuity. Yeah, we'll keep Most Wanted. We can't keep Most Wanted. Why can't we keep Most Wanted? Because Halo 4 is, like, way better. You don't know that.

We do. But you don't know it either this is why we have a discussion here i know griffin is the one who would know it god i please don't squeals all right griffin you have to choose literally you let's see pros and cons pros and cons okay most wanted totally sick cars totally sweet racing it's burnout but with a different name so that's pretty bad single player it's got a really great soundtrack you heard that ikana pop song it's like i want it that's a good track i like that very much bads also known as single parts too much crashing um it's you gotta drive hard to escape from the cops it's very hard to escape from cops the ai is silly um The AI is not that bad. This does not even sound close.

Halo 4. Pros. Loadouts. Love it. Points. Gotta get them. Graphics. Graphics are top notch.

Got them. Pro quality. Good sound. Cons. Cons. Cons. I'm probably going to play Black Ops 2 more. That's not a con.

You can't pick that as a con. Yeah, yeah. Wait, wait, wait, wait. That's a pretty big con. Because if Black Ops is just just gonna whoop it next week yeah but there's tons of people that like halo we're not doing we're not deciding it on their behalf we're deciding what our bestie bestie is i mean i can tell you guys you guys i get the sense that you are spiteful for racing games yeah oh wait wait wait i actually forgot i played 30 hours of

nevers be most wanted this is not even this is not even i mean like this isn't a case where if the game was good enough i will play a racing game but like i it has gotten nowhere near unanimous praise it's gotten some good stuff but even you know is that is that how you play your games now you just wait and see if there's a lot of praise no dumb dumb but it's how i choose like my best game of the year you you don't choose the best game of the year of other people's praise i think i don't like it you need to play this game both of you need to go play you said it when you were reviewing it you said there were things you didn't like about it yeah that's there were baffling decisions there are things i didn't like about it. Yeah. There were baffling decisions.

There are things I don't like about every game I play. Except for Halo, which you didn't play. Hi, it's the biggest release of the year. What are you doing? Wow. It's the biggest entertainment launch. Open up your gob and shove these fucking Doritos in there. Is it warm between all those Doritos and Mountain Dews?

Guzzle it. Guzzle this game down. Guzzle this Rito. Let's give it to Halo 4 fuck it yeah nothing we do fucking matters we're all gonna die someday anyway and what we would do sarah i could go and i could kiss my girlfriend or we can sit here and argue about halo and most wanted none of this fucking matters go outside carve something guys i feel so bad for getting rid of Need for Speed. Well, you know what? You can bury it next to LittleBigPlanetVita.

I cremated LittleBigPlanetVita. Actually, you cremated LittleBigPlanetVita while it was still alive. Yeah, it wasn't an honorable death. It's sack skin just peeling away. Thank you so much for joining us on the besties. We have a lot of fun here, but seriously, let's talk about it. We really don't have that muchies uh we we have a lot of fun here but but

seriously we really don't have that much not we used to have a lot of fun here but then a lot of big games started coming out every week and it was not uh it was not as easy to make these decisions um but we really appreciate uh all of you joining us on this journey please recommend our show to a friend or uh make sure you subscribe or give us a review on itunes or what have you uh if you want to read our stuff it's all at polygon.com visit there twitter it uh google plus it facebook it youtube it it's all polygon just get it get it in you uh like this dairy like this dorito Mountain Dew. Put it in you. Oh, God, that'd be so good. Cooler Ranch. Hey, Justin, in your juicer,

can you pour a bunch of maybe Livewire and some Cooler Ranch in there and then juice it and then get rid of the chaff? And please don't die. Check this out. Ecto Cooler Ranch. Oh, man. Numbah, numbah.

And that's going to do it for the besties. Make sure you join us again next Friday for the besties because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games besties