The Besties - The Besties Podcast 37

Episode Date: November 30, 2012

This week, The Besties examine just how humble you need to be for the Humble Bundle. Also, Griffin tries to explain Persona, much to the chagrin of all involved. There's also a question of how Agent 47 manages to hide in the middle of Chinatown, even as a very tall, very pale white guy. 08:30 - Hitman: Absolution 21:00 - Planetside 2 30:30 - Halftime: Thanksgiving and gambling 34:35 - Persona 4 Golden 45:45 - 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!

Did you guys hear the news? No. What's the news? Humble Bundle is over. Oh, God. What? It's back. It's no more.

What? A lot of people are saying the bundle's not humble. I think a major publisher coming to gamers and saying, just give us anything. Yeah. Please, any amount of money, and we'll let you have all these things. Please, just anything i

think that's pretty humble it's that's about it seems humble to me it's about as humble as it gets i just don't get it you guys what i just don't get it i just bought like eight games for 15 bucks like that's bonkers i could have paid a buck like how is how in any way is that a bad thing yeah well you gotta compare this is a little thing? Yeah. Well, you gotta compare, this is a little math lesson for you, Griff. You gotta compare any bucks with no bucks. Cause that's what they were getting before. Yesterday they didn't get any money.

I follow you. And today they're gonna get some money. The complaint of the funding isn't going towards helping a company make more games. It definitely wicked is in the case of THQ. THQ is asking its mom for money to help make games.

They definitely super need it. My name is Justin McElroy, and I know the best game. My name is Griffin McElroy, and I am here to guide you through what games this week are good. My name is Christopher Plant, and I know the best game of the week. My name is Griffin McElroy and I am here to guide you through what games this week are good. My name is Christopher Plant and I know a pretty good game this week. My name is Rose Frosting and I know the best game of the week. Here on the besties we take the hottest

latest greatest releases from the week. Pit them against each other in mortal combat until one comes out on top and then we pit it against our current reigning champion to see which one reigns supreme russ fresh dick blops you know blops blops too blops too i asked i finished the campaign for oh boy i um i kind Shut up, Dustin. You're wrong. Maybe because you lowered my expectations so much.

But I thought it was kind of cool. I agree with you. There's a lot of really cool parts in the campaign. The ending... The last 10 minutes. The ending is a total dog fart, and then you're like, well, that was a dog fart, and then the credits roll, and then comes the real dog fart was a dog fart and then the credits roll and then comes

the real dog fart oh boy holy shit i don't want to spoil it for anyone i i won't say what happens but i it's unbelievably bad it's like a it's like a deadly premonitions-esque level of unbelievability and it happens at the end of the biggest entertainment franchise in the universe well to its credit it takes about 30 minutes to get through all the credits so maybe like by then you're sort of like thinking you're watching something else i really did actually go outside and uh hook up all of my christmas lights and then russ christmas is a um it's a holiday. What was this? Birth of Jesus. We'll talk after. Is it like Simarastora?

I've got good news, Russ. But I went outside, hooked up all my Christmas lights, and came back in, and the credits were still going on. But that, when you see what happens in the last, like, 10 minutes of this game after you beat it you my jaw was on the floor and we're not even talking about the leave uh is it a spoiler to say that jimmy kimmel is in the end i didn't even see that oh okay so uh you could bleep out whatever you want but essentially because the game has divergent endings depending

on what you do one of the endings features late night show host jimmy kimmel interviewing karma the hacker girl and and menendez is watching her and jimmy kimmel on tv and shaking his fists angrily oh okay well if that had happened in my game, it would have been a really one-sided interview. Oh, yeah. Because Jimmy Kimmel died in Justin's game. Jimmy Kimmel died in my universe. I can't. I...

It's worth playing through. But, okay, but the game itself, I thought it was like really crazy the like the ending level is insane really the final level you're talking i didn't think it was interesting at all it's like it's there's so much going on like it's it feels so against the odds in a way that like those games really don't it feels like sort of like one of those one in a million chance type things and there was a level before that actually where you're trying to act like your

goal is to avoid conflict but it's not a stealth mission um like you get through the level sort of by avoiding killing people oh yeah that was a good one that was really i have no idea what level you're talking about you're a you're a secret, and so you don't want to kill any of your guys. Oh, right. I killed all of my guys. There's a lot of fighting going on around you. The only thing I thought was weird, other than the ending, was I know people talked a lot about the divergent stuff.

A lot of it you wouldn't really realize was divergent. I had a, for instance, I had an issue where I accidentally started the next mission when I wanted to do a Strike Force mission, and the Strike Force side missions, they dry up, they disappear after a while. So there's no way to go back to the menu and choose another mission once you start a mission. So what I had to do was actually rewind the game to the mission before that and play it again. Um, and in that, the last thing that happens in this level is you're chasing a bad guy and when i uh when i was chasing this dude the first time i was playing i i uh killed the guy his bodyguards

and then i shot the guy and i thought that just like how the level ended. The second time I played, he got away from me and lived. But I would never have realized, I mean, it never would have occurred to me that it was divergent. And like, I think if you don't realize, then it's almost like, what's the point? Because- Right, it's essentially playing out.

Then you only realize it. Right, I mean, it's like, you only realize, if you only realize that it was divergent when you're like talking to someone later i so i knew to a certain extent when i reviewed it that they were divergent paths but i didn't know how divergent it was until the very very end when i talked to people about it and it was at that point yeah i essentially felt like oh that's like a cool interesting thing that it played out differently for someone else.

But it didn't really pay off in the way that like a decision in Walking Dead pays off where like honestly like anything you do you feel like is a divergent path. Here essentially, as you were saying, it just feels like a Call of Duty story. Like it doesn't feel like you are making any real impact in what you're doing except for like a couple very specific parts so that's called it's our game of the year 2012 thanks no it i really actually liked a high percentage of the levels and i didn't even finish modern warfare 3 uh and i i actually really liked a lot of what black ops is doing i thought it was a lot of it was really interesting man that's too bad because the end of modern warfare 3 uh and i i actually really liked a lot of what black ops is doing i thought it was a lot of it was really interesting man that's too bad because the end of modern warfare 3 is is bonkers it is oh my god it's good so let's talk about this week's game yeah there's a good idea

uh what's what's everyone been playing i honestly guys i play black ops 2 that's what the kids have been playing that's where i've been at that's where i'm at right now that's where i live that's where my house is i've had a much broader palette but i think we're gonna kick things off with hitman absolution which uh who's been playing that joint playing that chris plant yeah have you been playing that too russ no not at all i mean am i the only one who's been playing it yeah i've heard about it and i one time i killed a man oh wow yeah i killed a man in um in charleston south carolina were you dressed as like a french stripper and no i was just like wearing my just wearing my just wearing my civvies just wearing like i was wearing like a jeans and i was wearing like a sweater it was in fall so it was a little chilly and uh so i killed a man wow did you feed him fugu or how'd you do it

uh i punt i just punched and kicked him oh until he died until he stopped that's a good way to do it that's classic does it take to kill a man it depends on like your strength and the relative like weakness of the bones of the person you're punching and kicking so it was like i don't know it was like 30 30 of each he must have had like a bone disease i because i measured it because for each punch i did i also did one kick so that's smart i would alternate i would do a punch and then a kick and then a punch that's basically craub mcgraw yeah so how's hitman it's good i i feel like i'm probably not the best person in the world to describe it beginning and i had not played a lot of hitman games so maybe i'm speaking to all the people

who are new to hitman like i am uh it's really good it's like playing a david fincher movie those old david fincher movies like seven the old uh but it just visually is just very dark and grim but has this kind of uh macabre humor about it uh so the premise if you don't know is you are a hitman uh you are bald you look like the hitman that was in the movie hitman that was based on this series of video games uh you have uh the little barcode tattooed your neck there's a whole story about how you have to save this little girl it's terribly uninteresting uh what is interesting is what you do uh each mission is a hit uh and you have one person so far that you need to uh assassinate

have you have you played any of the hitman games no i've played like 10 minutes of each of them maybe okay i was always i honestly i was always intimidated by them because there are certain fan bases that i think scare people like me away from games and people would describe this game as the most impossibly difficult and like cerebral game that you will ever play cerebral and uh so far what i can tell from this game it's not the case uh it's pretty easy. Anywho, so the point is you have to kill someone. And in the map there will be like maybe a dozen ways to do it, maybe more.

But you don't know about this beforehand. You just try to figure out by listening to other people's conversations how to maybe lure this guy away from where he's at and blow him up. An example early on is like you're in the middle of chinatown and this guy is in a very very densely populated area uh with bodyguards everywhere so i walked over to his car uh i beat on it so the alarm went off he came over to check out the car and i shot him in the face uh buried him and i stole the clothes of his nearest guard and just walked out uh what i find really simple version of what you can do you can do things way more complicated than that i think it's kind of funny that he's supposed to be like the world's greatest hitman and his whole plan for all of

these missions i'm just gonna wing it yeah that he figured out he's like i'm gonna go in assume that they're gonna hang out here for at least, you know, 30 minutes, and listen to strangers because they will obviously know the best way to kill this person. And they will just coincidentally discuss things that would be, like, the worst things to discuss if you want to protect someone. Like, oh, yeah, that guy sure is standing in the middle over there. Hey, Linda, I don't know if you heard, but that window two stories above him has a sniper rifle in it. Huh. Okay. Cool.

Thanks, Todd. See you later. Hope the kids are well. Todd, that may qualify as sexual harassment. So, Linda, somebody's watching us right now. If you don't give me a kiss, I'm going to kill you. Hey, I heard a rumor about Jerry. I heard he hates being put into meat grinders.

It's his only weakness. The thing about this game is there's also this really twisted sense of humor which you if you've seen images or video of the game like the hitman will dress up as uh all sorts of goofy shit like the swedish chef or like a mascot or something but also the conversations people have are awful like one of the first conversations that you overhear at the beginning of the game is you're about to reach into a window and pull a man out and throw him to his death like on the craggy rocks below and his last words are oh yeah they called and it

turns out it's not terminal the cancer is going to be just okay oh my god oh god um so yeah i like playing this for the first time it's a little unusual because my instinct for a game like this is to just blast through it and this game would be incredibly fast uh if you did that they put so much time and effort into these like gorgeous environments and all the different things you can do with them uh and they don't really motivate you in any way to go back and play the levels i mean that is an option that pops up at the end along with you know like all these uh icons that are badges basically you can earn and those kind of hint at other things you can do and ultimately you want to you know 100% the stage but there's no there's nothing that the game does to make it clear why i would want to do that other than my own like curiosity chief bows yeah and and that's fine but it's like man they

put so much work into each of these stages yeah and i mean if you're good you can finish one you know 10 minutes so that was one of the things that i've like i like the hitman games to a certain extent but i've always found them a little weirdly frustrating because like in a stealth game you know failure is you get spotted for the most part and that's pretty much it you're going to reload a save in hitman the game generally doesn't i mean i guess there's something freeing about the fact that the game doesn't really require you to restart but invariably like a plan goes to shit and you end up just sort of slaughtering a bunch of people and that's sort of okay well here you just die if you if you really if it goes to shit and people see you like you're screwed i mean at least i had it on like a

difficult enough setting that like a SWAT team would appear in like a minute and they would just destroy me uh how is it have you tried like stealth in it through it yeah i mean that's how you kind of have to play it through stealth i mean how i'm i'm super into like stealth games i think dishonored got me into the idea of like being okay with that genre for the first time in my entire life like how how does it make sense the stealth like is there feedback is it like if you're in the shadows then nobody can see you even if you're right next to them yeah i mean you you there's kind of a vision mechanic basically there you have this like uh i always call it feral sense because that's what it was in wolverine origins which was the first game i saw this in but But you hold a button, and it depletes this bar,

and when that's held, you can see who sees you, kind of like what the paths are, so where the guards are going to walk next. It gives you a foresight. And then also, if you're in a costume that is the same as the guard who sees you, so if you're a cop and he's a cop, it basically will trick him so he doesn't see through the

disguise uh and this runs out relatively quickly you can also use it to like uh shoot like four people in a row when you burst into a door or something uh yeah i mean the problem is this stuff does run out so it it's not as intuitive as say market and ninja which i think is like the most you know exactly what you're doing at all times in terms of stealth um yeah it's weird i it's like i really really like the game i think it's visually beautiful and there's a lot of crazy things that you can do in it but ultimately, a lot of these stealth games, I still feel like I'm learning the language of the developer, where it's like, hey, we thought of 12 really cool ways for you to kill someone.

I hope you find them in this level. Well, I mean, all that stuff has to be driven internally, I feel like, for games like that. When I played Dishonored, I tried to play it without killing anybody because I feel like they had designed it so you could do that and i kind of wanted to see their vision for that idea i feel like if you you have the option of just shooting your way through hitman but i mean there's got to be people out there who just kind of want to see how they have designed these things yeah they're they're they're mouse it's mousetrap you know like i i feel like we

have got to stop comparing every single game to mousetrap do we do that a lot i didn't notice but yeah it's it's basically like the spring is already set and the joy is in watching it play out uh and with dishonored i felt it was a little different in that while the deaths weren't as you know crazy i felt like i was always in complete control of it uh it was something like i had earned and like i i i did it not like oh i found what i needed to you know spring i i did hear about a later mission in hitman where essentially it's night and you're trying very carefully not to wake daddy and that kind of reminded me of something else i heard of this other mission where you're hanging out

with an Inuit family in Alaska, and their child falls on the frozen lake, and you have to cross the lake to get to them, but the ice is very brittle, very thin. Oh, no, no. But I did hear about this mission where you have to go to jail, and then you have to escape, but the only people who can help you are grapes.

That's a good one. That's a real big one. So here's... Before we get off this, one thing I do want to say, I don't know how it is on 360, and as RushDick can attest, I'm a PC snob. Beyond it just looking balls awesome on PC,

like, it's the first game where a cut scene ended and i didn't do anything for a minute because i thought the cut scene was still just kind of going uh oh i didn't realize the game was here and the reason i think the reason that is is you will go into these environments like chinatown and there are as many people if not more people than would ever be in a place like this like they're just showing off with how many uh ai care like npcs are just strolling around and all of them are having conversations and it's so awesome to play a stealth game where you blend into the people because you actually just blend in with the people it's not like assassin's creed where it's like oh i i was walking with these three prostitutes and no one noticed me.

Like, you get lost in a crowd. There's a level on a subway platform where, like, you need to get lost in a crowd. And it feels like you are actually hiding from the cops in a crowd of, you know, hundreds of people. Yeah, but you're, like, a really tall, very pale, bald dude. No, because you murder one of the civilians on your way in and then you dress up as them that's horrible yeah that's how i do i like that though that gives our motor running kind of like to hear that i shouldn't admit it if you're charged up you know so as someone who's not familiar with the series you you still dig it yeah i was intimidated I no longer am. I strongly recommend it. Because I have played some of those Hitman games,

but that feeling that Dishonored gave me of like, well, the stealth didn't work out, but it's still going to be fun. I have a clear memory of getting the exact opposite vibe from Hitman games. Yeah, the non-stealth stuff has never felt amazing in those games. No. Yeah, right. the good thing is when it works here it's it's more of a tension game than like i feel like most stealth is i feel like most stealth is you sneaking up on someone else right and using stealth in that way and the

most exciting moments of this game is just not being seen like in plain sight it's holy shit this guy is literally inches away from me and i can't strike right now and i need to get him into the right place so that it looks like i wasn't even here yeah that sounds cool i'm down with that yeah but how much does the game cost who i don't know like a gajillion or something might as well because the game that we're going to talk about now doesn't cost any money so So your game, as a result, costs infinity times more. How many times have you used this argument? This is your favorite argument.

This is not a good argument. I know. I've been playing a lot of Planetside 2. Oh, that's a lot like Mousetrap. It is sort of. It's free to play. Yeah, that's true. It is free to play yeah that's true um it is free to play and let me preface everything

that i'm about to say by saying that you should absolutely definitely play it um assuming you have a pc that can handle it honestly my pc is not great and it it does it just fine but i've heard a lot of people complaining that it's uh it doesn't work but uh it's so planet side did anybody play the original planet side briefly it was terrible it wasn't very good um and it was pressure because i think that what they were trying to go for just that there was the technology couldn't yeah support it was far too ambitious there were no hit boxes like you just like if you shot somebody in the body like they would just sort of register it and then maybe die. So the years have been good, I think, to the Planetside dream,

because it feels a lot more like what they talked about in Planetside. And it still has its fair share of issues. I think my biggest problems with the game come from transitioning directly from Call of Duty Black Ops 2 to Planetside 2, which, like, don't get me wrong, I'm not comparing them at all. I understand that they are completely different experiences. But still, coming from a game where it's all about the individual and an individual with the right set of skills

can, you know, just clean up and totally decimate to Planetside 2, where the individual is basically worthless like you can't do anything on your own in planet side 2 have any of you played planet side 2 just i know you were talking about getting in i put it up yeah i played the uh the beta a little bit i have downloaded it and and uh and i'm itching to get on board with my new warrior Killbo Baggins. That's good. I'm pretty excited.

So basically it is a massively multiplayer online first-person shooter, which are becoming in vogue right now. And it is free to play. You can pay for station cash, which is their currency for Sony Online Entertainment games, to buy weapons, but you can also just unlock them normally by playing. I can't think of anything. There are vanity items like armor and experience boosts that you can buy with station cash, but everything else you pay for in the game.

So it's class-based you have you know like engineers who can build turrets and heal vehicles and you have medics who can heal and revive people and you have light assault which have jet packs and heavy assault which have big rifles and stealth classes and a big mech class um and there are tons of vehicles and aircraft that you can use and and basically it three factions war over all these different control points on these enormous continent sized maps and you just struggle for control of those of those different control points and when you conquer a region then it gives you certain supplies that you need to build the things that you need. Like you can't spawn a certain type of vehicle if you don't have the supplies you need. Basically, the entire experience of the game is based around working within a platoon. It's very much like MAG in that sense.

Would you say it's like platoon? It's a lot like the movie Platoon. Where basically if you don't work together if you do not if you're not part of a coordinated front attacking uh you know uh one singular point and you're putting all of your effort into this one thing the game is not much fun yeah i have a question question yeah uh when you said mag how many people do you think remembered that game justin and i played it quite a bit yeah we got so that's good the two people were playing it yeah yeah well is that shut down now have they shuttered bag is my shot i i've so i don't

think they need to if nobody's playing it griffin i was no no let me let me come to the defense of mag real quick because planet side 2 represents a lot of the same ideas mag had some totally dope stuff going on like great ideas the way that squads and platoons like the different tiers of organizations and having like one body in charge of a squad and then one body in charge of several squads like planet side 2 basically does all of that but it does it in a giant persistent world so like you'll have those big 100 on 100 you know dog fights for a facility but what's cool about planet side two is when that is over your whole army like just rolls onto the next target and like being a part that's one of my favorite things about planet side two not like the the fights for a facility but like just rolling in a huge armada of of aircraft and tanks and uh four wheelers yeah it's like uh the helicopters in uh what's that movie apocalypse

it's yeah it's like straight up like ride of the Valkyries. Like it's so awesome. And then when you can just crash against another wave of people coming at you like that, it's like there are some – when everything comes together in this game and you have two like coordinated groups coming at each other at the same time, it is not like any other shooter I've ever played. Like it actually captures that feeling of like running down a hilltop towards your target with like bullets and missiles whizzing overhead like it actually does that shit more than any other shooter ever has so the issue is that you have to wait so long to get into

situations well that's that's sort of the question i had so the correct me if i'm wrong the entire game is pvp yeah yeah it's all pvp it's all pvp so and are you playing are you personally playing with people that you know i haven't no so is it an issue because like when i play call of duty solo more often than not it kind of sucks because you're not like directly talking to people yeah so do you have an issue coordinating with strangers no because it has so it has in-game voice chat which is helpful um and when you do get in there with a guy who's like we have a tango coming in the six o'clock entrance of the like it's kind of dope like you kind of get

into that mindset really nicely but it also has like a lot of options for instantly finding a group. And then I think every 20 or 30 minutes or so, you can instantly spawn into that group. Otherwise, you have to get a vehicle and catch up with them. From starting the game, loading up into your bases, your headquarters, all you have to do is press insert to automatically insert yourself into a group

and then press insert again to automatically spawn in on that group so you just keep pressing pressing insert yeah basically the whole game is you just keep tapping insert and whichever army taps at the fastest wins um that sounds like my friday night it's like curiosity basically it's basically like that yeah there are it the problem is that it needs a lot of balance fixes like i have only found maybe two guns that i don't just hate like the guns are either completely impotent or they they buck like a mule um that just the gun play is kind of weak across the board which i think can be fixed also the unlocks like you wait a minute it's a shoot a first person shooter how can you fix that if that's not working that

is a big big problem i mean just lowering the recoil on all of the weapons across the board would be great here's the problem the weapon unlocks like they're so unbalanced how they unlock it so you earn cert points by playing which are what you use to unlock things inside of your classes so you can spend like a thousand cert points to unlock a new gun so you're earning certs you're earning certs you're earning fresh fresh breath mints okay um you will have to play for like an hour or two to get enough certs to unlock like maybe one or two attachments for a gun like it's not it's just so slow and i understand they're doing that for retention because it's an mmo well not only retention they want to make money well they want to make money but

i don't think you can actually buy attachments and stuff with real money you can buy guns with real money like the the business model just doesn't make any sense but moreover it's just the carrot is like two miles away from you like you are you are it takes so long to get anything that you want and then like there's weird stuff where like you'll buy this healing kit and you're like awesome that only cost me one cert point and the next level it's like now it's going to cost you 50 cert points if you want to upgrade it. It's like, well, that'll take me four hours to get that much. I just don't want to do that.

But again, I think that's a thing they can tweak. I think they can just make stuff a little bit cheaper. It has its fair share of problems, but it's free. And those moments, those Helm's Deep moments are some of the coolest battles I've been a part of in an online game. That does sound pretty cool. I'm on the Terran Republic. If you want to join up on Watterson, there's the server.

Somehow I don't think it's running on my MacBook Air. I just, I love Bill Watterson so much, and so I wanted to fight specifically for him. For the honor of Bill Watterson so much and so i wanted to fight specifically for him for the honor of the if you kill enough of the bad guys then ford won't be able to make pictures of calvin peeing on my logo is calvin peeing on the other two factions in the game with a dual stream of urine who was in las vegas oh god this week i was i so i feel like there's a picture in people's minds of like the ideal thanksgiving and more often than not that picture does not resemble loud neon drunk people in white beaters uh that was pretty much my las vegas great thanksgiving that makes it really easy

we don't even have to talk about i know you're right how did that happen it's because my grandparents live there do they like they love it thanks uh las vegas is um sort of ideal for old people because it's very flat and you can drive everywhere and there's's a lot of early bird specials and such. So they loved it. They love it. They like the reels. They like the slots.

My grandmother plays slot machines all the time. Yeah. But it's... Is she addicted, would you say? Yeah, probably, but... I heard this really sad episode of This American Life about being addicted to slots. She's like 85. What else is she going about being addicted to slots. She's like 85.

What else is she going to be addicted to? That's true. Yeah. Hugs? I guess. Calls from her grandkids? What if your inheritance is lost to just the old steel machine? Yeah, I'm worried.

I don't know. It's nice to see family and stuff, but I just sort of wished it was more idyllic than loud insanity. What hotel did you go to? Tiger can't change his stripes, you know? You spend your whole life hearing about how this city is just full of a bunch of drunk, irresponsible people, and then you go to it and you don't like it because of how drunk and irresponsible it is? pretty much did you did you gamble yeah i played some poker against how'd you do locals i

didn't do great i've never had the nerve to play at a table it's fun if you do um go to vegas that's what i would recommend because even if you lose at poker uh the money your money still lasts like way longer than at like blackjack oh my god tell me about it like i was able to play for like an hour and a half or two hours and i ended up losing like 80 bucks which in the long run like you could 80 bucks is usually where i ended up like losing whenever i went to the um the the local table games around Huntington. I forget exactly where it is. I would usually cross it's a,

it's out cross. Yeah. I would usually, I would usually hit that 60 to 80 mark. And then I'd be like, well, that's a good, that's a good amount of money to lose.

Yeah. And I feel like you're losing it to people and not a faceless like institution. Oh no. I, I was, I was a blackjack man oh really yeah i would lose that shit in like 20 minutes maybe if i was lucky wait you were playing blackjack in huntington yeah are these illegal tables no no they know there's a legalist they have a yeah not in

huntington in in cross at the dog track yeah at the cross oh that's a good stuff maybe you you lose 60 bucks on the tables you go drop a duck but a buck on a doggie and then maybe you win it back maybe it's a good i understand your confusion the table games are relatively new there yeah they just they just made those legal... Economy hit you hard. Economy's tough, man. We're selling our soul to coal. Now we're selling it to the green-eyed, one-armed...

I asked if they'd take script from the mine, but they wouldn't accept it. They wouldn't do it, huh? I want a good old-fashioned American Sponduli. I have no idea what you're talking about script you know i'm making script jokes i don't know what that is okay well have fun on google who's been playing persona 4 me guys i'm like i'm like 34 hours deep into that guy and man yeah i'm confused so this is persona 4 golden yeah did you play persona 4

no i've not played any of them don't need to because it's not golden why would you want to play the non-precious metal edition of this game it doesn't make sense i have to say before you listeners out there shut your brains off i was once like you i would hear persona and like my brain i would go to sleep i finished i finished i had never played a persona game until persona 3 portable which i got for the vita and i spent maybe 50 hours on and that was earlier this year and i'm still like i was still hungry to play even more Persona which is fortunate um basically what you need to know about Persona it is a game composed of two parts and the first part is like a life simulation um where you uh have to make social connections with people that this is

not like a creep in not a creepy way because that might be where you go um you just meet people and some of the people are party members that you use in combat some people are just locals around the town um but everything you do also complements the other part of the game which is a dungeon diving rpg um where you you know do the stuff that you think goes along with that genre you fight monsters you collect treasure is it turn-based is it like final fantasy it's turn-based yeah um but there's a lot of the combat is sort of the combat is based around uh finding like the weaknesses of your enemies and then exploiting them because you get extra turns for doing that

so you have to try and like set up combos and basically keep them from attacking is it actiony in the way that like paper mario is actually no not at all not not not in the least little bit um and you do that combat with other party members who have personas which are sort of set in stone for them it's just like this character is a fire type guy and this character you know is really strong but the main character can change personas which you collect in a pokemon-esque fashion um usually you can just find them after you after you win a battle but you can also combine them in all sorts of different ways to get new personas um there's it's a very complex but like really rewarding system because there's like inheritances you can give powers from one persona to the other uh and once you figure it out like

you can really tailor make your your strategy which you need to do because as the battles uh get harder like you need to sort of evolve to to move up um but all of that stuff is complemented by the other part of the game, which is like each, each social link is what they're called. Each relationship you have with somebody outside of the dungeon strengthens your ability to make a certain type of persona inside of the dungeon. So you may have, they're all split along like tarot cards.

So you may have like one relationship that represents this one tarot. And if you get it really, really, really strong, then the next time you make a persona of that type it will also be very very strong this is the hardest yeah thing to even perceive i know it's hard to explain too basically everything you do in real life better prepares you to fight in the dungeon um and yeah i'm gonna is this the game where you shoot yourself in the head yeah no that was persona 3 oh okay uh they don't do that anymore how do they evoke yeah

persona 3 had this kind of cool prep school um almost like buffy the vampire slayer vibe because like you were this elite team of hunters that lived in this dorm but by night they they you know went into this tower and fought things persona 4 is like much stranger you take it takes place in this really sleepy small town and you go inside of your television uh to this like alternate world inside of your television um it's really it's it it runs the lineup of quirkiness like right up to being too weird and that's all represented in like the dialogue and the localization like it almost crosses over but it doesn't which ends up being like super charming and entertaining chris man i thought you i thought you played this i thought you were getting into it i was really interested in it

and like i was sold now i don't know now it sounds it sounds really it sounds really complicated it's not only that i hate final fantasy and it sounds like a lot like final fantasy it's so it's so i'm gonna try it justin you play persona 3 and persona 3 is very very similar to persona 4 there's a lot more stuff to do in Persona 4, but the core of the game is basically the same idea of splitting your time between real life and dungeon stuff. I ate so much Persona 3 that I played for 40 hours, and the way my experience of that game ended was me just standing up from the

table and pushing my play away and saying i can't eat anymore yeah but if you haven't tasted any persona 3 you might be surprised at how much you enjoy the flavor the problem i'm just stuffed right the problem with persona 3 i think is that there weren't all that many things to do outside of the world. Like every game has, I think, the same amount of social links, which you have to develop over time. But there's also stuff like you can go see a movie and improve like certain skills or you can, you know, do this one mini game. And Persona 4 Golden has like dozens more options to do. Like you will not spend... It takes place over a year,

so you spend every day basically doing different things, and no two days I spent doing the exact same thing. Which, it put a really interesting... I was worried. That was my biggest concern when I was playing Persona 3, was that you have a hard time limit. After a year, the game is over. But it really does lend itself to like being just good storytelling like special events happen during the town and like your characters look forward to them and like you feel like you

really get to know the setting of the game and and the the characters that you're interacting with can you can you describe sort of like a social link example where it's like oh i would need like are you just talking to someone and giving them a flower no like you'll you will have basically the quintessential gold exclamation point over their head telling you like every given day is split up into different chunks right so there's like the morning when you're walking to school and that's usually like a cut scene telling you like what's going on. And then after school, you'll have the option to basically do whatever you want. So you can go, you know, hang out with one of your friends and there will be a prompt telling you that, you know, this person wants to hang out with you. So you can do that. And then if you've developed a relationship enough, like the social link will get stronger.

can do that and then if you've developed your relationship enough like the social link will get stronger um and and those social link storylines are told in like a a multi-step story like so the first step may just be like oh my dad's in the hospital and then like it'll just sort of play out from there and like a lot of the themes are pretty mature a lot of them are sort of thematic about like high schoolers discovering their place in the world which i i mean you may not you may not dig on but it's it's all handled very well and it's very it's really well written and are they confused about why their bodies are changing yeah there's a lot of uh there's a lot of explaining what a pube is and when you explain what a pube is good, then your monsters get stronger.

Oh, awesome. Yeah, it's really good. So guys, are we ready to make a decision yet? Yeah, I think so. I feel like I could talk about Persona 4 for about 20 more minutes. I feel like I could listen to you talk about it for about 20 more minutes.

Yeah, I'm about to. I think it's a pretty clear winner that this week is Need for Speed Most Wanted. Man, I played the multiplayer for that for the first time last night. What? Holy shit, is it fun. Wait, wait, wait. So the reason that game got knocked off is two of you ass clowns didn't play it.

And then the person who was like my co-conspirator hadn't even played the whole point of the game well the single player is like super good no it's not it's like it okay it's fine the multiplayer is the whole well maybe you should have fucking told me to play the multiplayer you really should have told him oh my gosh i i would like to petition like i'm gonna bring it back at the end of the year and it's gonna be great it's gonna be like it's gonna be like guy I'm going to bring it back at the end of the year, and it's going to be great. It's going to be like Guy Fawkes-level conspiracy to get it back in the running. We need to follow the practice that we've been going.

Yeah, because we've never changed the rules of the show before. Nope, never. Yeah, you're a doofus. Hey there. Hey, you can't see, but I'm pulling my collar right now. Let's not look that far forward, although it is coming up. I actually want to say that Persona 4 wins. That way I have to play it, and then I can refute that claim later.

I haven't done a good job of explaining it. You like it a lot more than Pirate Side? I don't think anyone can. Yeah, yeah. I may have not been showing my enthusiasm enough it's it's one of my favorite games that I've played this year like it's it is it is completely engrossing every free moment I have I play it and that's partially because it's it's very very good but also it's just perfectly designed for yeah pick up and play like it is it is well I'll vote

for Persona 4 so long as you stop describing it right now okay thank you we have a deal but people should really try hitman too yeah you seem super enthusiastic about it i'm really i i need to play the rest of it i feel like we're all very low key this week i feel like we're all fucking tired and i think we're all worried that there's no more games coming up that's not true next week is far cry far cry 3 okay so i actually wrote down on this piece of paper next week is far cry 3 knowing that you were gonna say it so can you give me two other games what was the other game besides far cry oh uh what was like a flash game that can be matumbo's four and a half weeks okay okay so can we pre i know that we've never done this

before can we prematurely give it to far cry 3 for this week is that possible have you not played don't get me wrong i haven't played these games oh my gosh but i know one star is a white guy that's no one star is a white guy who is gradually re-raced or something. The story is really weird. Okay, no spoilers. One of them does feature some of the best writing in a game I've seen all year. And it's written by an ad. And it's not Far Cry.

Dikembe Mutombo. It really is something special. Well, listen. Let's not count our Dikembe Mutombos before they hatch. Is it a flash game? Yeah. Ohio. Let's get to that.

Let's get to that later. The real question, are we dethroning black ops 2 because it came out on the it came out on what game actually i think we're retiring it yeah i'm fine with that it's not going to be in our discussion so i i say put persona forward yeah that's fine guys i never thought this would happen well that's fine it's getting booted out next week so it doesn't matter horse malarkey i wish i i wish i could show it to you on the computer because it's you are looking into a crystal ball this is what the future is man can you show it to us orally uh yes so you stand on a savannah in the distance there is grass and it's moving wind but as you get closer you realize those are dogs, and the dogs are coming at you.

Wait, Savannah? I thought this took place on an island. You pull out your shotgun, but the dog's already there. He bites your arm. You throw the dog to the ground. You shoot the dog in the face, and then you cut him open, and you pull out his guts. Oh, my God. You make those guts into a knapsack.

Oh. That's actually the game i just i spoiled five minutes of the game that sounds actually great it's pretty great yeah you i lit a shark on fire with an explosive arrow okay spoiler boom did g.o.t son of a bitch was l.l cool jay in his mouth at the time? Man, I wish I could talk about this game because the opening five minutes to this game is so absurd. We're going to have to save it for next week. Oh, man. It's going to be good. Folks, thank you so much for listening to our program.

We really appreciate all of you tuning in. Polygon.com is a website where we put our words and let our ink fly. So you can go there to see everything that we got cooking. You can also follow us on Twitter, at Polygon.

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If you do go, let me know what's on it, though. I have net nanny, or I'd go myself. I have a self-imposed net nanny. Did you say net nanny net nanny did you say net yahoo he's got his own problem net nanny it's my grandma she sits behind me she says what is polygon.com gross thanks for joining us on the besties and be sure to join us again next week because you're the world's best friends. Pick the world's best games. Besties!